Operation OPSON: 260,000 Litres of Fake Oil Seized
As prices peaked, so did the fraud. In November and December 2023, police across Europe pulled off one of the biggest olive-oil busts yet — a quarter of a million litres of lies.
What happened
Under Operation OPSON, Spanish and Italian police working with Europol dismantled a major fraud network and seized more than 260,000 litres of olive oil falsely labelled high-quality “extra virgin.” Investigators reported that some of the oil was so degraded it was unfit for human consumption — not merely mislabelled, but adulterated and dangerous.
Why it matters
This is the predictable, ugly end of a price spike. When real extra virgin is this expensive, criminals fill the gap with cheap, refined, or rotten oil dressed up as the real thing — and at this scale it’s organised crime, the agromafia we’ve been tracking for years, simply scaled to the moment.
Most olive-oil fraud is a rip-off — you pay for extra virgin and get something lesser. But “unfit for consumption” crosses into a safety issue, and it’s a stark reason to care where your oil comes from. The defence is unglamorous and reliable: traceable origin, harvest date, dark glass, honest price — and deep suspicion of a cheap “extra virgin” in a year like this. The machinery is in how olive oil gets cut.
Sources, Nov–Dec 2023: “Olive oil raids of 2023 in Europe”; Food Safety News.