Beware "very dangerous" fake Johnny Walker headed for Bangkok

 

Image: Thai Rath

 

Excise officials busted a factory in Thailand's far south on Thursday that was mixing up fake Johnny Walker Red and Black label whisky. 

 

The whisky was described by officials as "very dangerous" for consumers and was headed for Bangkok and surrounding areas as well as for consumption in Hat Yai. 

 

The man behind the fake booze is a foreigner.

 

The raid was conducted in the Khuanlang sub-district of Hat Yai, Songkhla. 

 

Two women who were caught as they prepared to fill bottles had tried to burn fake excise stamps and toss them down an outside drain. 

 

Sriwat Jaichanalert, 40, and 20 year old Amornrat Jaimongkhonwongsa would take delivery of 25 gallon drums of already mixed spirit, put it into bottles, add labels and excise tabs and arrange for it to be delivered.

 

For this they were paid 30,000 and 15,000 baht respectively. 

 

Sriwat said that she didn't know the identity of their boss. She had an outstanding case of mixing fake alcohol pending.

 

A regional excise officer said that the man behind the operation was a foreigner and that the fake booze was very dangerous for consumers. 

 

The two women will be prosecuted and the hunt is on for the owner of the business. 

 

Source: Thai Rath

 

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2018-11-17

It's always somebody else's fault, this time a foreigner.

It is not fake booze it is fake Johnny Walker.  

 A lot of the pharma here is already faked so I guess this is just following suit. Poisoning people for profit is pretty cold though.

Thats why I drink Sangsom these days, for the purity

It can't be any worse than the real Johnny Walker. 

2 minutes ago, ZeVonderBearz said:

It can't be any worse than the real Johnny Walker. 

It can, some 10 years ago i bought a bottle of JW Red, then, back to homecountry, i bought another one in a duty free shop in some Italian airport.

2 very different whiskies with the same label, none of them deadly though.

In the nomansland between cambodia and thailand they sell loads of fake booze and cigarettes....all brands available but the ciggies are very bad. Didn't try the booze.

45 minutes ago, RotMahKid said:

It's always somebody else's fault, this time a foreigner.

As often we hear in this forum that Thais cant think etc... It is not surprising that even these fake stuff has to be done by foreigners. ????

59 minutes ago, rooster59 said:

The whisky was described by officials as "very dangerous" for consumers

Why?

 

Is it "lao khao" colored with sugar molasses, perhaps? If that's the case I can only agree with that statement.

 

And what's "fake alcohol" anyway? Either it's alcohol or its not. If anything, it might be "fake Johnny Walker". 

34 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

It can, some 10 years ago i bought a bottle of JW Red, then, back to homecountry, i bought another one in a duty free shop in some Italian airport.

2 very different whiskies with the same label, none of them deadly though.

Just out of interest, do you recall if the fake stuff had one of those plastic 'pour restrictors' on it?

They're there to stop real empty bottles being harvested and refilled.

I wish these media reports had that level of detail, it sure would help punters to know if even the plastic pour caps are being faked or tampered with. 

1 hour ago, rooster59 said:

Beware "very dangerous" fake Johnny Walker headed for Bangkok

Beware Johnny walker full stop, horrible stuff. 

All alcohols are not safe to drink. The usual stuff we drink is ethanol.  However plenty of 'cheap' alcohol is laced with methanol and methanol can turn you blind and even kill you.  Lots of these full moon parties are noted to serve cocktails laced with methanol.

1 hour ago, Nyezhov said:

Thats why I drink Sangsom these days, for the purity

 

Actually, this is true. Sangsom is so cheap it’s not worth counterfeiting and it’s a distinctive taste so you know what you are drinking. As the last poster mentioned methanol is extremely toxic and it is easily produced when making alcohol. 

45 minutes ago, Misterwhisper said:

And what's "fake alcohol" anyway? Either it's alcohol or its not. If anything, it might be "fake Johnny Walker". 

It's methanol?...when they distill moonshine they throw the first and last bit away....that makes you blind.

27 minutes ago, Small Joke said:

Just out of interest, do you recall if the fake stuff had one of those plastic 'pour restrictors' on it?

They're there to stop real empty bottles being harvested and refilled.

I wish these media reports had that level of detail, it sure would help punters to know if even the plastic pour caps are being faked or tampered with. 

I think they both had the plastic bit, but i could not be sure 100% after 10 years.

But i have been told from some Russian friends that the same brand of Vodka is different in Thailand compared to the Russian one.

 

There has been plenty of this being distributed and served in Patong bars all this year.

Why they never warn for very dangerous coaches/minivans coming to bangkok? Those are deadly, this fake whisky isn't.

1 minute ago, fruitman said:

Why they never warn for very dangerous coaches/minivans coming to bangkok? Those are deadly, this fake whisky isn't.

I will avoid both of them.

1 hour ago, ZeVonderBearz said:

It can't be any worse than the real Johnny Walker. 

It was the whisky Churchill preferred, believe it or not.

This stuff has been available for years....thb 700/litre for Black.....

A gang was busted 2 years ago.....a couple of petty fines, but of course, kept up production....very professional and hard to tell from the original.....with Malaysian "duty not paid" stickers.

 

29 minutes ago, fruitman said:

It's methanol?...when they distill moonshine they throw the first and last bit away....that makes you blind.

In the colloquial use of the word, you normally mean ethanol (a.k.a. ethyl alcohol) when you say "alcohol", not methanol (although that is a substance of the alcohol group, too, just like butanol, propanol, etc.).

 

Methanol always is a by-product during fermentation and subsequent alcohol distillation, but it evaporates at a slightly lower temperature than ethanol, which is why the first charge is usually thrown away (and to be on the safe side, the last charge as well). An experienced distiller thus always keeps a very keen eye of maintaining the proper distillation temperature.  

 

But that apparently is not what is being reported in this story. I suspect the "fakers" use cheaply-priced alcohol (i.e. ethanol) like rice liquor (a.k.a. lao khao), then spruce it up using sugar molasses to make it look like a "real" whisky before filling it into JW bottles and affixing fake excise stamps.

 

Having explained that, products like Saeng Som, for example, also are colored with sugar molasses, as freshly distilled alcohol is colorless. Good quality whisky, on the other hand, solely gets its color from maturing in wooden casks, often for years, actually drawing the color from the wood itself.    

No doubt Big joke will be on the case,or cases.

1 hour ago, mauGR1 said:

But i have been told from some Russian friends that the same brand of Vodka is different in Thailand compared to the Russian one.

Who knows what happens at the bottling stage here. I'm always suspicious when the label says "Bottled by a somchai in a BKK backyard".

Johnnie himself drank the fake stuff, that's why he needs that blind stick...

3 hours ago, Small Joke said:

Just out of interest, do you recall if the fake stuff had one of those plastic 'pour restrictors' on it?

They're there to stop real empty bottles being harvested and refilled.

I wish these media reports had that level of detail, it sure would help punters to know if even the plastic pour caps are being faked or tampered with. 

Watched it on Thai news last night...Yes they tamper with the pour restrictors as i watched them pushing in the new ones....They were making JD a couple of years back as well. First time I ever had a hangover from JD.

Try Johnnie Walker....

 

5 hours ago, Small Joke said:

Just out of interest, do you recall if the fake stuff had one of those plastic 'pour restrictors' on it?

They're there to stop real empty bottles being harvested and refilled.

I wish these media reports had that level of detail, it sure would help punters to know if even the plastic pour caps are being faked or tampered with. 

You are correct with the trickle inserts, these are connected to the bottle with a metal band which is very hard to get off. If you notice on the bottle tops of the examples below they are different.

 

Not much else stands out too much, even though one may be fake.....................

 

 

6 minutes ago, chrisinth said:

You are correct with the trickle inserts, these are connected to the bottle with a metal band which is very hard to get off. If you notice on the bottle tops of the examples below they are different.

 

Not much else stands out too much, even though one may be fake.....................

 

 

Keep working.

I'll stick to my local Ya Dong.

No issues.

 

Problem solved.

Sabai Sabai.

 

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