After words of caution from Oi Magazine about fake alcohol in Saigon, a Thanh Nien expose has revealed that beer is also being counterfeited as well.
In an alley in Tan Binh district, a Thanh Nien reporter found men sitting in a 20sq meter room, taking empty bottles of Heineken and Tiger, filling them half-way with the original product and the remainder with Saigon beer.
After buying empty bottles and bottle caps from restaurants, the group would clean the bottles with alcohol (and who knows what else), fill them with the concoction, and quickly ship them out. For if not consumed quickly enough, “chemical residues after cleaning the bottles made the beer impossible to keep for a long time.”
Charming.
In response to the Thanh Nien article, last week, the Economic Crimes Investigation Division (PC46) caught one of the operation’s workers, 23-year-old Thach Muone, carrying seven cases of Tiger beer to an eatery in Tan Binh and failed to produce bills for the beer.
Following a confession from Muone, police raided the home of ringleader, Vo Thanh Cong, who admitted his crew distributed over 60 cases of beer per day which were sold to restaurants around the city.
For each case of 24 bottles, they charged VND235,000-255,000 for Tiger and VND310,000 for Heineken.
Unlike fake alcohol, fake beer may be hard to detect since it's often served with ice and has a similar taste to the original product.
Check out the video below for footage of this fake beer operation in action.
