Victims have been conned out of millions of pounds in a whisky barrel investment scam, a BBC investigation has found.

Hundreds of people were duped into ploughing their life savings and pensions into casks that were overpriced or did not exist, while some individual casks were sold multiple times to different investors.

The victims include one woman with terminal cancer who invested £76,000 and another woman who spent more than £100,000 on casks which experts say were only ever worth a fraction of the price they paid.

The BBC can reveal that police are investigating three Scotch whisky companies over fraud allegations, with investments running into the millions.

The market’s popularity has grown rapidly in recent years because of the reports of huge returns being made from rare whiskies.

Investors buy a cask of whisky when it is first produced and then hope that it rises in value as the spirit ages in the barrel.

It takes three years for spirit to become Scotch whisky in a cask, and investors are encouraged to keep barrels for up to 10 years or more to maximise returns.

There are many legitimate traders – but a lack of regulation has enabled fraudsters to exploit the market. They use misleading claims and even outright fabrications to lure in unsuspecting investors.

There is no central authority regulating or tracking the ownership of casks, making it difficult to verify claims.

As a result, many investors find themselves entangled in complex legal disputes or left with assets worth far less than they were led to believe.

Alison Cocks, from Montrose, invested £103,000 in a company called Cask Whisky Ltd, run by a man calling himself Craig Arch.

She initially bought a single whisky cask for £3,000, and at first everything appeared legitimate.

Mrs Cocks was given certificates, and the company provided an online portal where she could track her investment. Her portfolio appeared to grow, on paper at least.

Comforted by the projected returns she was being promised, which started at 12% and were forecast to increase to as much as 50% over time, she was convinced to invest more.

She bought another three casks for a total of £100,000.

However, she said that the problems started when she told the company she wanted to sell.

“Suddenly they didn’t want to talk to me anymore. They were avoiding my calls. I was really panicking,” she said.

“I decided I would start investigating my own casks.

“On my certificates, it showed where my casks were, allegedly. When I actually contacted those warehouses, they weren’t there.”

Mrs Cocks was told by independent whisky valuers that she paid five times what her barrels were actually worth.

She has since been able to track down three of the four casks in warehouses, but none is in her name. One has also been bought by someone else.

The most expensive cask she bought – which cost her £49,500 – does not exist.

Alison Cocks is one of 200 people who invested with Cask Whisky Ltd and are trying to work out if they actually own their casks.

The BBC has discovered that Craig Arch – the company’s CEO – is actually Craig Brooks, a disqualified director and convicted fraudster.

In 2019, Brooks and his brother were jailed for a £6.2m fraud, where 350 victims were cold called and convinced to invest in carbon credits and “rare earth metals”.

The City of London Police Serious and Organised Crime team is now investigating Brooks’ whisky company.

But the BBC can also reveal that Brooks is running another cask whisky company, Cask Spirits Global Ltd, under another false name, Craig Hutchins.

As a disqualified director, it is illegal to run or control a company.

Yet, using the name Hutchins, Brooks told an undercover BBC reporter that he was in charge of “decision making” and that he dealt with finances.

When confronted, Brooks admitted his name wasn’t Hutchins, but maintained all of the whisky casks he sold existed. He said he never told the reporter he made the company decisions.

Another company, called Whisky Scotland, has also left a trail of dissatisfied investors.

They include NHS worker Jay Evans, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2021. She put her home in Brighton on the market so she could make investments to provide long-term security for her loved ones.

She invested almost £76,000 in Whisky Scotland after being promised lucrative returns from a company director.

Mrs Evans, 54, sold her home and moved to Peacehaven in East Sussex, then used the money from the sale to invest in seven casks.

The company’s director sent her voicemails from across the world, telling her she was his “favourite ever client” and that he would “always look after her”.

But two of the casks did not exist, and the other five had been sold at a much higher cost than their true worth.

Mrs Evans has been told it would take 25 years to recoup what she has paid.

The company and directors have now vanished. Its Glasgow office is just a rented space and a BBC reporter was told they were never there.

“They’ve made somebody who’s facing end of life at an early age, they’ve made it infinitely more difficult. None of it will matter to people like this,” she said.

Her wife Susie Walker said it was “heart-breaking” that the money Jay had worked for had gone overnight, and that she would now need to carry on working.

Self-employed locksmith Geoff Owens, from Wrexham, invested his life savings – more than £100,000 – with Whisky Scotland.

He and other investors are now trying to track down their casks and their investments.

Mr Owens says he will not stop until he finds out what has happened to his money.

“No-one is going to rip me off and walk away from this, without me facing you,” he said.

“I will get an army together who you’ve ripped off, and we will try and do something about it.”

The BBC asked the directors of Whisky Scotland for a comment. It did not respond.

Martin Armstrong runs Whisky Broker, a bonded warehouse in Creetown, near Dumfries, which stores 48,000 casks.

He says he’s being contacted “almost every day” by investors looking for casks sold by unscrupulous companies.

Asked if he thought that fraud could ever be so rife in the sector, he said: “No. But I knew it was possible.

“When there’s money involved, then everything follows.”

Kenny Macdonald – a legitimate whisky cask broker who runs his own company, Dram Mor – said there were other “good guys” operating in the industry.

He said there were “a huge amount of people” who were “profiteering” – but that in those cases, investors were at least getting a product.

“And then you get the ones who are downright nasty. And they’re selling somebody a piece of paper, for a cask that just never existed.

“The sharks are circling. They know there’s blood. They can smell it.

“And unfortunately, in this particular case, the blood is whisky.”

• Additional reporting by Liam McDougall