Inside the BBC Hunting the Whisky Bandits - what happens now

The trading of casks has been around for decades, but it’s becoming more common these days as the industry faces one of the biggest boom times.

Many of these cask companies have hit the headlines for being fraudulent. One of the biggest was the case of Casey Alexander, 26, who scammed $13m [£10.4m] out of American pensions, with buyers thinking they were investing in Scotland's lucrative whisky trade.

There is no official or published record of the buying and selling of whisky casks and no established legal process for the trade. According to the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA), exports of the drink in 2022 grew by 37 per cent by value to £6.2 billion. The membership organisation, regarded for its work representing the Scotch whisky sector, does not offer advice to private investors.

While these fraudulent investments have been sporadically reported, it has taken the BBC’s Disclosure programme to showcase just some of the people who have been scammed - as well as confronting some of the businesses doing so.

The programme and podcast came out in late March. Last month whisky writer and Keeper of the Quaich Felipe Schrieberg, independent whisky broker, market analyst and consultant Mark Littler - who set up educational tool Protect your Cask last year - and one of the producers on the show, Laurence Cook, hosted an online webinar to discuss how the programme was made and gave their thoughts on what can be done.

Mr Schrieberg said there should be little trust in any business advertising sales of whisky casks. He said: “The way that most of these firms work is they're either selling something that doesn't exist or they're selling something that does exist, but the prospective client or investor is massively overpaying for it.”

He added: “We think that the current wave of what we're seeing is many orders of magnitude larger than the last scammer wave of 25 years ago and it's our opinion, based on what we've seen and researched, that the industry response to the problem has been fairly lacklustre.”

Mr Cook, a freelance audio/visual BBC producer, said he was not sure this investigation would be as good as his former work on Donald Trump’s golf course in Aberdeen, but then quickly changed his mind once he saw the scale of the problem.

He said: “Sam Poling, who's the reporter on it [the show], gave me a PowerPoint presentation, which detailed just a slither of the findings and just that little kind of amuse bouche was enough to let me know that this world of cask whisky investment fraud and the people behind it was just as mad and just as bad as as any other story that I'd worked on.

“But also it was ongoing. This is not a historical story, this is something that's happening right now. So there was a real public interest angle to this, which was about catching the baddies right, it was about proving that these people are doing what victims were saying that they were doing.

“I think it's probably quite important that this was made by people who could look at whisky as a commodity rather than as something kind of holy - not to characterise people in the industry too much in that direction. But it was useful to look at it as basically a criminal commodity, a thing that you can use to extract money from people.”

Mr Cook said many people had been broken in the aftermath of being scammed. He said: “We found people who hadn't told their families the true scale of the loss. We found people who had contemplated taking their own lives.

“We found people who would talk to us for background conversations, but wouldn't talk on air because of the shame that they felt beyond the financial. And I should say that that nobody that we spoke to could afford to lose money, nobody we spoke to wasn't massively affected by this. But beyond the financial, there are massive massive human costs here, which are also about a lack of trust.

“There are lots of people out there left in the dark as to whether their asset exists or not, or if it ever did or if it sold multiple times and it consumes people's lives. It totally occupies their mind all the time.

“It's a horrendous thing. To be burgled is the invasion of your space, but to be defrauded, there is no locale. It's just all in your head and your heart. There's a lot of people that are really broken by this.”

As for what can be done? Mr Schrieberg said the Scotch Whisky Association needs to do more, adding: “Great whisky relies on honesty, integrity and transparency. The best stories come from this, the reason we fell in love with the industry comes from this.

“The best distilleries work very much valuing these principles and all of a sudden we're seeing something that undermines it on every single one of these fronts. Because the SWA's remit is to protect the values that make Scotch whisky great and therefore keep it as a valuable product held in high esteem around the world, they should be weighing in - that's my opinion. There is a good debate to be had about that, but the industry's got to do more.”

Independent bottler the Whisky Baron has launched a petition calling on better regulation of the Scotch whisky market.

A spokesperson said: “Despite whisky being Scotland's national drink and a key part of the UK economy, HMRC have done nothing to protect or regulate the cask industry.

“The Scotch Whisky Association continues to protect and advocate for Scotch as a category, but they have done very little with their position to make tangible changes in the cask market.

“Distilleries are hands-off with the issue and even societies within the whisky world like the Keepers of the Quaich have remained quiet. Tens of millions of pounds of fraud has already been uncovered and as a hands-on trader entrenched within the industry I can assure you we have only scratched the surface.

“Please act now so that we can put an end to this madness. Scotch is a drink of the people and we the people need to protect it from these rogue traders.”

A spokesperson for the Scotch Whisky Association said: “The vast majority of cask trade is conducted legitimately, and indeed is vital for the day-to-day operation of the Scotch Whisky industry. But the number of so-called cask investment companies offering misleading and potentially fraudulent investment opportunities has increased in recent years.

“The SWA does not have a mandate to regulate cask investment. However, it is important that anyone considering investing does so with clear and accurate information, and in 2020 we took the step to issue consumer guidance highlighting the market and the risks, obligations and costs of personal cask ownership. We regularly review that information and released refreshed guidance for 2025.

“We welcome the ASA’s rulings against the misleading claims made by some investment companies, and remain in close contact with the relevant authorities to clamp down on spurious cask investment claims. We will continue to monitor developments in the market to ensure that consumers, and the reputation of the Scotch Whisky industry, are protected.”