“If there’s a critical scandal, [cask fraud] may severely harm the fame of scotch whisky worldwide,” was a part of Ewing’s closing remarks. Nonetheless as he factors out earlier in his speech, fraud is already being found inside the business.
In June 2022 a British man was arrested by the FBI, accused of defrauding $13,000,000 via whisky cask funding schemes focused at aged traders within the US. As not too long ago as November 2023 the UK’s Promoting Requirements Company needed to challenge an enforcement discover to cask funding corporations to cease them from utilizing unrelated returns charges of in extra of 500% of their advertising supplies. Firms had been utilizing knowledge from the Knight Frank index which truly referred to the ten 12 months common of 100 bottles of very uncommon and costly whisky as much as 2018. The figures used had been 5 years outdated (the ten 12 months common has dropped to lower than 300% as of the 2024 report) and unrelated to the potential of casks because of being a very completely different asset.
Regardless of the fabric danger to traders it is extremely exhausting for shoppers to search out correct materials to teach themselves on keep away from being defrauded with a cask funding. That is why Mark Littler and Felipe Schrieberg spent virtually 12 months creating ProtectYourCask.com. However as Ewing’s deal with factors out, true safety wants to come back from increased up.