Thieves posing as a French supermarket giant dupped Neal’s Yard Dairy, a London artisan cheese wholesaler and retailer, into sending 950 wheels of clothbound fine Cheddar cheese before the company realized a fake firm had conned them to the tune of £300,000 ($390,000).
Neal's Yard claim that they have paid the original producers so that they would not have to bear the brunt of the cost and that they are working with the police to identify the culprit(s). That amounts to a significant loss for a small trading business that could take years to absorb.
British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver took to social media over the weekend to call for help telling his followers, "If anyone hears anything about posh cheese going for cheap, it's probably some wrong'uns."
As stolen cheese is such a unique speciality, getting rid of it will not be easy as chefs and restaurateurs are aware of exactly where their cheese comes from.
"I don't know what they are going to do with it, really," said Oliver. "Are they going to unpeel it from the cloth, and cut it and grate it and get rid of it in the fast-food industry, in the commercial industry? I don't know it feels like a really weird thing to nick."
The 24 tons of Cheddar consisted of three valuable, award-winning cheeses: Hafod Welsh, Westcombe, and Pitchfork.
The Metropolitan Police said in a statement: “On Monday, October 21 we received a report of the theft of a large quantity of cheese from a manufacturer based in Southwark. Inquiries are ongoing into the circumstances.”
Reports suggest that Neal's Yard had received an 'unusually large' order made by a man over the phone claiming to be a legitimate buyer. When contact details for the name checked out with industry contacts Neal's Yard proceeded with the order, only finding out the fraud after the cheeses were loaded on trucks and sent to France. Some reports suggest that Moscow could be the end destination for the cheese as the industry in Russia has been hit with import bans due to the war in Ukraine.
