Swiss Cuban Cigars - Sold three boxes of counterfeit Cuban cigars Internet

I purchased three boxes of Cubans from SCC; 10 Partagas Series P2, Montecristo 15 No. 2 and RyJ 15 Churchill tubos at prices I thought the were too good to be true and it turned out my intuition was correct. All 3 were counterfeits.

I opened the box PSP2 and compared it to a box I recently purchased from an official La Casa del Habano store in the UK. First, the SCC box was super smooth and didn't have the typical heat stamp lettering outside on the wood. Nor was there a piece of cedar inside the box that was embossed with the Partagas logo. What's more these cigars had a blonde wrapper compared to the dark ones from Casa del Habano. Lastly, the full box weighed a few ounces less than the real one.

I reached out to both a Habanos SA representative and the official Habanos distributor for the UK. They asked me to shine a UV (black) light on the green official seal to see if a hologram with a coat of arms and 2 dots on both ends of the seal appeared. None of the boxes had the hologram. Habanos said that there are counterfeiters who have an original box of cigars (many that haven't been in production for years) and then make high quality copies of the green seals. However, they haven't figured out how to include the hidden hologram in the seal. That's the fly in the ointment.

So, vendors like SCC encourage the prospective buyers to "check" the Habanos website to authenticate the bar code number. Having done that, the consumer is falsely led to believe the cigars are authentic. BUT only Habanos knows which official distributor purchased that box and the date. That's another telltale sign the boxes were fake.

After sending multiple emails to SCC describing what I discovered they continued to argue the cigars were real and that Habanos has seals that don't always pass a hologram test, etc., etc.. Habanos SA said that is impossible. The seal are like printed money-impossible to replicate.

After reviewing images of the cigars, box and the green Habanos authentication seal, Habanos SA and the official Casa shop said without reservation the boxes were indeed fake.

Recommendation: Avoid this vendor.