Wine futures' turned out to have no future

[McFurd]

ConsumerAffairs - James R. Hood - It sounds like a great investment: wine futures -- a chance to buy the best wines of tomorrow at today's prices. But as any seasoned investor will tell you, futures are tricky, even when they're real. The trouble with the wine futures sold by Premier Cru in San Francisco is that they were fictitious, according to the FBI, which recently closed its investigation into John E. Fox and his wine business. Fox pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison in December 2016, leaving his "investors" with not even a cork to show for their money. It all began in 1980, when Fox opened his store. When money got tight a decade or so later, he came up with the idea of selling "pre-arrival" wine on the pretense that customers were really getting a fantastic bargain -- top-tier wine when it matured in a few years at today's prices.
Eager buyers would put down $100 today for a bottle of wine that would supposedly be produced by an exclusive vineyard in a few years, when it would be worth much more than $100. Read more @ https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/wi ... 21017.html