The modern world is fraught with dangers masked as opportunities. Don’t believe me? Then you haven’t been surfing Craigslist lately or buying things on eBay. If the Romans were around today they would have inserted a mandatory set of exclamation points after their lovely phrase caveat emptor.

In particular, the world of wine offers unusual proof that a fool and his money are indeed easily parted, as the other familiar saying reminds us. As wine lovers, we’re always out for a good deal on great wine. Like collectors of many kinds (along with garage sale shoppers, antique store browsers, etc.) the dream of getting a phenomenal wine for a good price lingers in the back of the mind, and makes it far too easy to spend hard earned money on bottles that can sometimes turn out to be just liquid mistakes.

So what knowledgeable but budget-conscious wine lover among us wouldn’t have at least considered following in the footsteps of Deetrane, a friend of my fellow wine blogger Neil, who runs the blog Brooklyn Wine Guy?

Deetrane has been posting as a guest on Neil’s blog recently telling the fascinating tale of his adventures buying wine off of Craigslist. And if you haven’t read them, they are certainly adventures rife with treasure, crime, justice, and moral corruption.

See episode one, in which the protagonist discovers great wine deals on Craigslist and eventually realizes that they are indeed, too good to be true.

Feast your eyes on episode two in which the protagonist is involved in a police sting operation to catch the perpetrator of heinous wine crimes.

Wonder aloud at episode three in which the protagonist lives happily ever after, and seemingly without a scrap of guilt at continuing to drink stolen wine.

These are quite an entertaining series of posts, to be sure. Unfortunately the ending leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, as Deetrane seems perfectly content to continue drinking wine that he knows is stolen, a morally corrupt point of view if I’ve ever seen one. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying the story, even if it ends happily for only one party involved.

Thanks to Jack at Fork and Bottle who told me that the final episode had recently been posted.