British chef Jamie Oliver urges followers to help solve the 'grate cheese robbery'

LONDON (AP) — British chef Jamie Oliver is on the case of the stolen cheddar.

Oliver, who rose to fame as “The Naked Chef" on TV by stripping food down to its essentials, got cheeky in an otherwise serious plea to his social media followers to help solve the mystery of the missing 22 metric tons (48,488 pounds) of award-winning cheddar worth 300,000 British pounds ($390,000) that was stolen in a scam.

Calling it the “grate cheese robbery,” Oliver told his 10.5 million Instagram fans to be on the lookout for “lorry loads of very posh cheese.”

Nearly 1,000 wheels of cloth-wrapped artisanal cheddar were swiped from Neal’s Yard Dairy by a con artist posing as a wholesale distributor for a major French retailer, the company said. The cheese was gone before the company realized it had been scammed and reported the theft Oct. 21.

“If the deal seems too gouda to be true, it probably is! Let’s find these cheese stealers,” Oliver wrote.

Cheddar, which is named for the village in southwest England where it originated, is the world's best-known cheese because it does not have the protected status of other regional products like champagne and, thus, is produced in many countries. But there are only a small number of real British cheddar makers, Oliver said.

“These are some of the cheeses, or most of them, that got nicked,” he said in a video accompanying his post.

The cheeses were from three makers: Hafod Welsh organic cheddar, Westcombe cheddar, and Pitchfork cheddar.

Detectives at Scotland Yard and international authorities are searching for the culprits.

Neal's Yard Dairy, a distributor, wholesaler, and retailer of British artisanal cheese, has asked international cheesemongers to be on the lookout for the stolen cheese, particularly in 10-kilogram (22-pound) and 24-kilogram (52-pound) blocks.

“If anyone hears anything about posh cheese going for cheap, it’s probably some wrong’uns," Oliver said.