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9th December 2025
11:18am GMT

A British woman, Natali Ray, who is reported to have never broken any law in the past, this week appeared in a court in Virginia for an alleged wine heist.
However, the wine in question was worth tens of thousands of dollars, so she’s not facing prison for stealing just your typical cheap supermarket wine.
The price of the wine is approximately $42,000, and Ray, mother of three, could now face a 50 year prison sentence in the US for her role in the heist.
The mum of three posed as an employee of a wealthy businessman from Canada who was looking to purchase some wine, and she donned a disguise to make it all seem more convincing.

Six bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti were the target of the heist.
The bottles, produced by a vineyard in Burgundy, France, sell for thousands of dollars and they are highly sought after.
Daily Mail has posted CCTV footage where on 19 November, a woman who went by the name of ‘Stephanie Baker’ asked to see the wine cellar of the L'Auberge Provencale Inn & Restaurant.
She said she wanted to check that it was climate-controlled, and the restaurant thought this request was quite reasonable, so her and another suspect were shown the cellar in which the expensive bottles of wine were stored.
The wine was reportedly concealed in a specially adapted pocket in her companion’s coat, once the pair got inside the cellar.
Authorities arrested Ray at the scene of the crime, but her companion managed to get away. While in tears, she said he was somebody she had met on a cruise.
The 56-year-old from the seaside town of Herne Bay in Kent, in the south of the UK, now faces charges of grand larceny, conspiracy to commit grand larceny, and defrauding an innkeeper, and could end up in prison for half a century.
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