A man purporting to run a fine wine investment firm has been disqualified from directing a company until 2026.

The head of a fraudulent London-based wine investment firm Capital Bordeaux Investments has been banned from being a director for 11 years.

The company’s sole director, Scott Andrews, scammed at least 10 people who together paid £59,750 for fine wine that never materialised. The UK's Insolvency Service found that CBI's marketing materials stated it had been trading since 1995, when Andrews would have been just six years old, when in fact the company was not founded until 2012. 

The scam represents the rising threat of fakes that come with surging demand for “passion investments” such as fine wine. For some years now, fine wine has had its own benchmark, the Liv-Ex Fine Wine 100 index, and the luxury asset's recent popularity has triggered some high-profile cases of counterfeiting.

“It was Mr Andrews and his salesmen who benefited from this company rather than its honest investors. He misled members of the public and took their money without providing them with the goods they’d been promised. Anyone showing such blatant disregard for commercial morality should expect to be banned from running any limited company for a lengthy period [of] time,” said Paul Titherington, official receiver at the Public Interest Unit.