Hundreds lose life financial savings to merciless whisky rip-off – ‘I lost £103k’ | UK | News | EUROtoday

A surprising whisky barrel funding rip-off has left a whole bunch of victims out of pocket, with fraudsters conning unsuspecting traders out of tens of millions, a BBC investigation has revealed. Promised profitable returns from uncommon whisky casks, many people as an alternative discovered themselves with overpriced, non-existent, and even duplicated belongings.

Among the victims is Alison Cocks, from Montrose, who invested £103,000 in an organization known as Cask Whisky Ltd. Initially buying a cask for £3,000, she was inspired to speculate extra as her obvious returns soared on paper. However, when she tried to promote, the corporate stopped responding.

After her personal investigation, she found that one in all her casks had been offered to a different investor, whereas one other, purchased for £49,500, didn’t exist in any respect.

Cask Whisky Ltd was run by Craig Arch, later uncovered as Craig Brooks, a convicted fraudster and disqualified director. Brooks had beforehand been jailed for a £6.2 million fraud involving carbon credit and uncommon earth metals.

Despite his disqualification, he was discovered to be working one other whisky funding agency, Cask Spirits Global Ltd, beneath a false title.

One significantly devastating case includes NHS employee Jay Evans, identified with terminal most cancers in 2021. She invested £76,000 in Whisky Scotland, hoping to safe her household’s future. Assured by an organization director that her investments have been protected, she later found that two of the seven casks she bought didn’t exist, whereas the remaining 5 have been grossly overvalued. The firm has since disappeared, leaving Evans and others with out recourse.

Self-employed locksmith Geoff Owens from Wrexham additionally misplaced over £100,000.

He stated: “No one is going to rip me off and walk away from this. I will get an army together who you’ve ripped off, and we will try and do something about it.”

The whisky cask funding market has surged in recognition attributable to experiences of considerable returns. Investors buy casks firstly of their maturation course of, hoping their worth will increase over time. However, an absence of trade regulation has made it straightforward for scammers to govern the system.

With no central authority monitoring possession, verifying claims is troublesome, typically leaving traders with nothing however fraudulent certificates.

Martin Armstrong, who operates Whisky Broker in Creetown, Dumfries, shops 48,000 casks and receives near-daily inquiries from traders trying to find lacking barrels. “I never thought fraud could be this widespread,” he admitted.

Legitimate whisky cask dealer Kenny Macdonald, of Dram Mor, warns that whereas some merchants overcharge, a minimum of they ship a product. But in lots of instances, he stated, “investors are just buying a piece of paper for a cask that never existed.”

The City of London Police Serious and Organised Crime group is now investigating Brooks’ whisky dealings. The administrators of Whisky Scotland, one other agency on the centre of complaints, have vanished, and their Glasgow workplace was discovered to be nothing greater than a rented area.

As the authorities pursue these fraudsters, victims are left grappling with the monetary and emotional toll. Many had invested their life financial savings, hoping for a safe future, solely to be left empty-handed.

With regulation nonetheless missing, trade insiders warn that extra unsuspecting traders may fall sufferer to comparable scams.

For now, the whisky funding market stays a high-risk area, the place, as Macdonald places it, “The sharks are circling. They know there’s blood. And unfortunately, in this particular case, the blood is whisky.”