WASHINGTON, July 5 (RIA Novosti) – Thieves in Miami stole $1.1 million worth of high-end Ukrainian vodka by busting a hole in a warehouse wall and making off with 4,500 gold-encrusted bottles of the infused spirit, US media reported this week.
“They appeared to know right where to put the hole: right in the middle of the aisle, next to the vodka,” Mark Owens, president of the vodka company Spirits of the Tsars, told a local NBC affiliate in South Florida.
Surveillance video from the scene of the June 22 theft shows a group of men pulling up to the warehouse in a Mercedes sedan and returning several times over the next few hours in increasingly larger vehicles: first a van, then a large truck.
They “saw the amount of the product, and then decided they needed a bigger truck,” Owens said.
The infused vodka retails for around $250, according to Owens, but can reportedly cost as much as $1,200 in nightclubs. The spirit features 24-carat gold on its label and is produced in Ukraine with a formula the company claims dates back to 15th-century Russia.
“We call it golden vodka for a reason. It’s an amber color, a golden color. It’s aged in cognac barrels for three years,” Owens told CNN affiliate WSVN.
Owens said the company only imports about 5,000 bottles of the infused vodka each year.
