As if London restaurateurs haven’t been hit by enough scams a new one has surfaced recently involving seemingly high spending customers ordering cases of wine, only for payments to eventually turn out to be fraudulent.
Pied a Terre restaurant in London and Midsummer House in Cambridge have both reported being targeted by the scam where someone calls posing as working for high profile individuals, one as an agent for a premiership footballer the other working for wealthy Arab Clients.
In both cases between £12,000 and £28,000 worth of high value wines and spirits were ordered and paid for over the phone by credit card with all the usual security processes being fulfilled. The scammers then send a taxi to pick up the wine and champagne for delivery to the address that the card was registered to, however in both cases the taxis were diverted to random drop off points where the goods were then off loaded.
