Fake Guinness Scam

Status: Scam
I'm a big fan of Guinness (Murphy's and Beamish as well), so this news report from Africa of a Guinness counterfeiting scam caught my eye. Three men have been charged with producing fake Guinness and selling it to bars in Nigeria. (From what I've heard, Guinness is incredibly popular in Nigeria.) The way they created the phony Guinness was what I found interesting:

They further explained that they buy the original product of Wilmot Stout [a cheap beer] from a depot located in Zuba in large quantity and with that they proceed to their factory where they start by first washing the empty Guinness bottles with the omo and water. After washing all the bottles, they then begin to open the original Wilmot Stout and empty into the already washed Guinness bottles and immediately use the fabricated cork machine to cork firmly so that it does not go flat. When that is done, they arrange the bottles into the crates and distribute to their customers.

I had imagined them brewing up fake Guinness in home-brew kits, but simply pouring a cheap bottled stout into a Guinness bottle is obviously much simpler. Bottled stout tends to be rather dense and not highly carbonated, so this would have aided their deception.

Food

Posted on Tue Feb 21, 2006


Comments

Just seems they could be making more money by just getting a legitimate job... That's gotta be a lot of effort to go through.

Not to sound prejudicial or anything... but what is it with Nigeria and scams..? I've heard from folks who've lived there that the entire nation seems to be downright *obsessed* with get-rich-quick schemes. Not just the traditional email one, but other schemes running the gamut of both creativity and credibility.

There's actually a site dedicated to conning the conmen (and women), getting them to jump through a few amusing hoops.. Forget the site name, '###-eater', or something.
Posted by Bobcat  on  Wed Feb 22, 2006  at  12:33 AM
Yep, 419eater.com
Posted by Boo  on  Wed Feb 22, 2006  at  04:21 AM
A friend whose husband was transferred to Nigeria told me that there is NO welfare there, and there is not enough legitimate work for everyone. Poor people get very creative in order to get by - including scams both local and by Internet. When Vonda and her husband moved into the company house, six electricians turned up to change all the switches from white to black - for no particular reason; it's simply accepted as normal for people to create work that doesn't need doing and stretch it out among several others so that they all get paid that week. And the big international companies just take it as part of the local culture, and pay up.
Posted by Wendy  on  Wed Feb 22, 2006  at  07:22 PM
This "hoax" doesn't really seem so bad. At least you get a bottle of real stout, just not the brand you were expecting.

I thought it was going to turn out they put something vile in the bottles (though some people I know would say that the Guinness factory itself puts something vile in the bottles).
Posted by Big Gary at the gathering of the clans  on  Fri Feb 24, 2006  at  04:07 PM
Actually, there is a Guinness brewery in Nigeria which produces a stout that is apparently significantly different to the brew from other places and much loved by the locals. Here in Dublin we now have quite a large Nigerian population who dislike our "traditional" version. They actually go to great lengths to smuggle their own version into Ireland.
Posted by Deediddums  on  Wed Mar 08, 2006  at  08:47 AM
This story might or might not be true but this is the way it was told:
It was in the 70
Posted by Leif  on  Sun Apr 23, 2006  at  10:50 AM
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