LONDON: British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on Saturday urged cheese lovers to help police catch fraudsters who defrauded a London dairy out of 22 tonnes of English and Welsh cheddar cheese.
Oliver described the robbery as a “brazen heist of shocking proportions”.
He told his Instagram followers to be on the lookout if they heard anything about “truckloads of very fancy cheese” being offered “for cheap”, adding that the cheddar would have originally been worth around £300,000 ($388,000).
The appeal comes after Neal's Yard Dairy said it delivered more than 950 wheels of cheddar cheese to the alleged fraudster posing as a wholesale distributor for a major French retailer before realizing he had been deceived.
The company, a major distributor and retailer of British artisanal cheese in the UK, said it had still paid Hafod, Westcombe and Pitchfork, the small producers of the stolen cheese, so they would not have to bear the cost.
He added that he was working with London's Metropolitan Police to identify the perpetrators.
The Met said in a statement on Friday that it was investigating a “report of the theft of a large quantity of cheese” from the London establishment.
“Investigations are ongoing into the circumstances,” he said, adding that no arrests have been made so far.
The dairy is asking cheesemongers around the world to contact them if they suspect they have been sold stolen cheese, particularly cloth-bound cheddar cheeses in 10kg or 24kg (22 or 52lb) formats without the labels.
