Have you ever been Subject to Whisky Fraud?

Whisky can be big money. We don’t need to tell you that. Not only have we written numerous articles about the most expensive whiskies in department stores and the most expensive to ever sell at auction - it’s just common knowledge now. It’s one of the first aspects that I was attracted to – the fact that I could enjoy something so premium (well, maybe the lower end of the premium).

But throughout history, anything with a big price tag must have a fake with an equally large, maybe BIGGER price tag. The Ancient Romans even had criminal gangs dedicated to faking olive oil, and they still exist today! So what is the extent of whisky fraud – what form does it take – and how much money is involved?

When Macallan first started selling cask investments, they had no idea that one would eventually sell for £1,017,000 in 2022. It is therefore painfully ironic that brokers massively inflated the price of their casks in the 1990s, asking for £3500 when they were valued at £600. As a result, many people who did not have ‘diamond hands’ (in the words of crypto nerds) lost a ton of money in the process. If you thought that mortgage brokers pre-2008 were bad, just be glad that whisky brokers don’t hold up the entire global economy.

But this wasn’t necessarily fraud – just good old slimy salesmanship. But in 2022, the same year that the Macallan cask sold for such a staggering amount, a man was charged with defrauding $13,000,000 from the elderly through cask investment schemes. Following this, and a ton of other misleading and untrustworthy advertising, a man named Fergus Ewing decided that enough was enough.

He is a Scottish MP who, in April 2024, decided to bring this to parliament for the first time, referring to these peddlers as ‘scam merchants’ and decrying the limited protections that apply to the whisky industry in this respect. Previously, only investors had felt the pain from these scams, and they were usually pretty loaded to begin with. But Ewing appears to worry that if these scams continue to gain traction, the industry as a whole could become viewed with the same disdain that the average person has for cryptocurrencies. And nobody who’s reading this right now wants that.

So consider this both a fascinating story, and a warning to fully vet any financial investments, whisky or otherwise. Anyone promising returns of 582% (as online companies were) is definitely, DEFINITELY lying to you.