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The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about whatever dubious-sounding claims come across our path on a day-by-day basis. In our archives we have hundreds of articles about the most fascinating and notorious deceptions throughout history, from the middle ages to the present.
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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.