Grilled - Jim Budd, scourge of all wine investment scammers, on truth and unsavoury vengeance

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Who are you? A drinks journalist and the editor of Circle Update, the newsletter of the Circle of Wine Writers. I own the website investdrinks.org, which is dedicated to highlighting the dangers of drinks investments. I'm also Contributing Editor of Wine, which is a business insider publication.

What first drew your attention to fraud in the drink world?

It was back in 1996. People were being encouraged to invest in Champagne, with claims it would run out by the millennium.

You were shortlisted this year for the Glenfiddich Independent Spirit Award. Were you expecting that? Absolutely not, it was a complete surprise.

What success has your work with the site enjoyed so far?

The DTI has closed down 18 companies that had investments in Bordeaux. It wasn't entirely down to us, but we played a part in it.

Is making a 300 per cent markup on wine in restaurants fraud?

That depends entirely on what you're doing. If you're selling it in a restaurant then no, because you're not claiming the buyer will make a profit. It's what you promise with it.

Do other countries deal with wine fraud better than us? No.

You also look at land investment scams, don't you? Which did you take up first? The drink.

Stephen Cleeve, a wine and whisky fraudster I was investigating, went into land scams.

And you went after him… After seeing how easy it is to do dodgy deals, have you ever been tempted to try some scams of your own? No, but sometimes you have to wonder why more people don't do it.

The biggest wine investment fraud I've seen was directed against American doctors, and the FBI didn't seem particularly concerned.

Is it more common than people realise? As Lord Goldsmith said, if you commit fraud, the chances of being caught are slim. Although the DTI should be congratulated for the action it has taken, the same can't be said for the police. Mayfair Cellars went into administration last year due to internal fraud and there still haven't been any arrests made or charges brought. And the guy involved has already made a clean breast since the fraud was carried out. I've just been contacted by someone who spent €90,000 on wine that's worth a tenth of that – it's going on all the time.

If you invited me to your house for dinner, what wine should I bring to drink? A wine you like and find interesting, and that you think I might find interesting. I tend to drink wine from the Loire rather than Bordeaux.

Do you get contacted by a lot of random nutters? Not really. What astonished me from the start, and continues to astonish me, is how effective the site, and the Internet in general, is in providing this sort of information. What's important to me is that I get genuine information from genuine people. You must have made a lot of enemies. Is there a price on your head? No, but a website called James Budd was set up claiming that I was a paedophile and that I'd been arrested. Letters were then sent out to all the members of the Circle of Wine Writers, making the same claims. I decided to deal with it head-on and went to the police, and persuaded the Internet Service Provider in question to take the site down.

investdrinks.org