Who didn’t bring Champagne to the party?
The late 1990s, the eve of the Millennium, and the anguished call goes out that there isn’t enough Champagne left in the world to celebrate the “biggest party for a thousand years”.
Stepping, conveniently, into the breach came Craig Dean, Lee Rosser and Julian Blee. Running the “House of Delacroix”, their Paris-based Champagne investment business from 72 rue de Honoré, they claimed to be able to save the day.
They persuaded hundreds of people to buy the 1996 and 1997 vintages of Champagne Lantz for £30 a bottle.
Their sales team took over £4.5 million and they assured their clients that they could keep their Champagne in bond before selling them at pre-arranged auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s just before the Millennium, netting their clients a yearly increase of 35% on their original investment.
The catch was that no auctions had been arranged. The Champagne was worth distinctly less than claimed and no tax had been paid for it. Many investors collecting their Champagne in preparation for the “bespoke auction” found themselves paying an added £1,300 to get their purchases shipped over.
And then of course there was no profit to make at all.
The trio stopped “trading” in 1997 and, unsurprisingly, their claims that there wouldn’t be any Champagne for the Millennium was proven to be utterly false. Champagne houses had been hoarding stock especially for the event.
A police investigation also revealed that the company was based first of all out of Clarence Road in Wimbledon, home to Rosser’s then girlfriend and latterly from 433 Herrengracht in Amsterdam, not Paris.
All three were arrested and jailed by 2001, Dean for three years, Rosser for 18 months and Blee for 12 months.
The latter two had previous form in this type of deception, having met Dean while they were scamming people in Gibraltar into buying what they believed were expensive single malt whiskies.
As a result, Rosser was handed another seven-year term and Blee received another four.
