Wine scam trial reaches final verdict

champagne top

(Image credit: champagne top)

A long-running trial involving a series of frauds, including wine investments, running into millions of pounds has concluded with the acquittal of the final defendant.

A jury could not reach a verdict on 52-year old Robin Grove’s role in Vintage Hallmark, which defrauded mainly Canadian and American investors of £30 million.

Investors were promised high rates of return over relatively short periods of time including a 50% return over 10 months from investments in Champagne and a 110% return over three months from investment in whisky.

While Grove has been acquitted, he remains disqualified from acting as a company director for a period of 15 years and is forbidden from undertaking investment business in the UK.

Written by Rebecca Gibb

Rebecca Gibb MW is a wine journalist and editor who has also founded Bamboozled games, ‘the world’s first wine and spirit puzzle makers’. Having spent six years living in New Zealand, she has recently returned to her native north-east England. While in New Zealand, she became a Master of Wine, graduating top of her class and winning the Madame Bollinger medal for excellence in tasting. A former winner of both the UK’s young wine writer of the year and the Louis Roederer Emerging Wine Writer, her first book The Wines of New Zealand was published in 2018. She also runs wine events and has her own consultancy business The Drinks Project. She was a judge at the 2019 Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA).