Reuters
Lille, France, Dec 24: Is that champagne or a cheap sparkling wine under your Christmas tree? French police said yesterday they had placed 21 people under investigation for passing off tens of thousands of bottles of low-priced bubbly wine as the more luxurious tipple from the eastern Champagne region, and sent one person to prison.
The swindlers had bought bottles of cheap wine, replaced their stickers with champagne labels and sold them for five to 10 times the original price, police in northern France said. Officers had worked on the case for a year.
Hundreds of clients were fooled by the group, which sold the bottles via associations or in door-to-door sales, they said.