U.K. Whisky Barrel Scam Swindles Hundreds out of Their Life Savings
Hundreds of people in the U.K. have been conned out of their life savings in a fraudulent scheme posing as a whisky barrel investment company, the BBC reported on Thursday.
In the market of rare and expensive Scotch whiskies, it’s not uncommon for people to invest in a cask with the idea of it accruing value over time as the spirit ages. But the industry for buying and selling barrels isn’t very heavily regulated, making it highly susceptible to fraud.
The victims of this particular scheme were duped into buying casks that were either overpriced, sold to multiple people, or didn’t even exist in the first place. The BBC report shared multiple accounts of individuals who have lost large sums of money in the scam, with some victims investing over £100,000 ($129,493).
One of the targets, Alison Cocks from Montrose, invested a total of £103,000 ($133,368) into a company called Cask Whisky Ltd. She started with a much smaller investment of £3,000 ($3,884) and she tracked the value of the barrel using an online portal provided by the company. The investment continued to grow at a favorable rate, so Cocks decided to buy another three casks. Then, she tried to sell.
“Suddenly they didn’t want to talk to me anymore. They were avoiding my calls. I was really panicking,” Cocks told the BBC. So she looked into the certificates she received when she bought the casks and called the warehouses only to learn that, apparently, the barrels of whisky did not exist. Cocks was one of 200 people who invested in barrels through this company.
During its investigation, the BBC also discovered that Craig Arch, the CEO of the supposed investment company Cask Whisky Ltd, was actually Craig Brooks, a convicted con artist found guilty of scamming 350 victims out of £6.2 million ($8 million) in 2019. Brooks also appears to be running a similar scam — Cask Spirits Global Ltd — under another fake name, Craig Hutchins.
The report revealed a number of whisky companies that appear to be using the same tactics, including one called Whisky Scotland that allegedly swindled a person diagnosed with terminal cancer out of her life savings. According to the BBC report, police are currently investigating multiple whisky companies connected to the fraud.
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