Wheeled away

It’s a deal that should have smelled funky at the time. A man posing as a French distributor of high-end dairy products made off with nearly 50,000 pounds of rare artisanal cheeses after conning a London cheese­monger. Officials with Neal’s Yard Dairy in London announced the theft on social media Oct. 25, saying the con artist swindled the cheese retailer and wholesaler out of more than 950 wheels of award-winning cheddar worth roughly $390,000. “The high monetary value of these cheeses likely made them a particular target for the thieves,” a company spokesman said. Officials with Neal’s Yard Dairy said it would still pay its artisanal suppliers despite its financial loss. The heist drew the attention of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who told his fans on Instagram to be on the lookout for “lorry loads of very posh cheese” being sold for cheap. A few days later, Neal’s Yard Dairy posted on social media that police had arrested a 63-year-old suspect. Cheddar cheese, like the stolen product, gets its name from a town in South West England where it originated. And while most in the United States see cheddar as a grocery staple, many English manufacturers still produce the sharp cheese as a specialty artisanal product.