Going To Batt

Conrad Narrowed His Eyes -

Not because he had indigestion but in anticipation of people crowing about a spelling mistake BAFUNES! THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE DOES MY BIDDING! not the other way round, and 'Batt' here is a surname, not the sporting implement as using in the Noble And Complex Game Of Cricket.  Although there will be a tenuous connection.  Art!

     The Wombles, a group  created by Mike Batt, who had nothing to do with whisky investment scams, which is what we're going to be focussing on today, because we here at BOOJUM! like to dog-pile on criminals and educate you.  It's a moot point how many of you are pensioners, since these seem to be the most likely group to get scammed.
     ANYWAY the story has it's roots way back in 1989, when the Securities Association wound-up a firm of fraudulent stockbrokers called 'Fox Milton'.  Conrad has done his due diligence and cannot find anything more about this gang of crooks. This is where Stephen Jupe, whom we traduced yesteryon, worked, and so did another miscreant, Lewis Rupert Daulby.  Art!

     Happy in his embracement of outlawness, Daulby, along with Lee Rosser, Julian Blee and Philip Lynk, ran Hamilton Spirit Management.  Their business model was to rip-off investors by charging £990 per whisky cask, that they had paid £300 for.  No whisky cask in the history of forever has ever sold for a 330% increase, so these people were already being conned.  

     Surprise! because the Serious Fraud Office tends to pay attention when you steal £6 million from your victims.  LRD went to prison for 5 years in 2000 after the SFO successfully prosecuted him, having been arrested at Luton Airport trying to flee the country.  Blee and Lynk also got prison time.  Art!

     No, that's a perfectly legitimate Lee Rosser, not the director at HSMC, who seems so shy of the camera that there aren't any pictures of him.  After HSMC collapsed, Lee Rotter (Ha! take that!) created the 'House of Delacroix', another alcohol scam, this time involving champagne: the fake brand 'Lantz', which no auctioneers had ever heard of.  HoD was based in Wimbledon, not Paris as alleged, and the Serious Fraud Office - welcome back, boys! - found that exactly nil auctions of the fake champagne had been arranged.  Ol' Lee copped a seven year prison sentence.

     Okay, okay, now we get down to the Batt, as in Keith Batt, an Australian out of Tasmania, so you can see the cricket connection.  Art!

     Unusually for these cases, I do have a photograph of Keith Batt, whom had at an earlier time in his life been a trainee priest (!).  Art!

     Let me put forward the info from 'Mark Littler' about this unlovely chump.

In the largest fraud investigation ever to take place in Tasmania, the Nant Whisky Group, headed by Keith Batt, sold $20m (Australian dollars) worth of whisky casks to investors, promising guaranteed annual returns and a guaranteed buy-back in four years at $36,000. Customers were told to buy as many barrels as they could at $25,000 each. 

     Nant soon ran out of whisky to sell.  No problem! they simply re-sold the same casks repeatedly, to the tune of $20 million (Australian dollars).  More than that, they diluted the whisky they actually had, down to 45% instead of the industry standard of 63%.  Way back at the start of this whisky scam exposition, Conrad warned you that a spirit under 40% proof CANNOT be sold as whisky.  Nant's adulterated stock would thus fall below this limit by the time their casks matured, making it worthless.  Needless to say, there were never any buy-backs and the complete opposite of 'guaranteed annual returns'.  That phrase again: 'guaranteed returns', which ought to have investor's Spidey-senses a-tingling, because there is no such thing.

       With hideous irony, Batt himself seems to have been the victim of a property scam, as he went bankrupt following a 'failed investment' that everyone involved has been very coy about.  This meant he had to sell Nant, and the new owners were horrified when they carried out a post-purchase audit.  

     This criminal enterprise came to light in 2017 and three years later ML were unable to find any criminal charges lodged against Batt.  Well, being a penniless bankrupt living in rented accommodation is rather a comedown.  The 'Australian Broadcasting Corporation' uncovered a whole lot of details about the scummy accountants and lawyers retained by Batt and Nant, and whom he blamed for everything, the poor dear.  We may come back to this later.  Art!

     I could go on, because greed and whisky are mutually intertwined.  Maybe more tomorrow.  Conrad bets you can hardly wait.

Here's A More Cheerful Note

As cheerful as we get here on the blog, which is usually tinged with a dash of mordancy.  Art!

     This is Ronin the Rat, a giant African pouched rat, whom has been trained to detect landmines and other ordnance.  Active in Cambodia, he has successfully cleared 109 mines and 15 other pieces of undetermined ordnance, setting a rodent record.  You might be wondering why a rat?  Because of their low mass.  They tip the scales at 2 or 3 pounds, and are thus too light to trip a pressure fuse, so can be used in areas where a dog would risk triggering the mines.  They are also much faster than a human with a mine-detector, able to clear areas at up to 50 times the speed of a Hom. Sap.

     As I recall, normal rats only live a couple of years, but the GAPR can live up to seven, and as Ronin is only five, he has more mine-detecting to offer.  Art!

Ronin roamin' in the <thinks> Cambodien

Just To Make A Point -

It would have helped if this had come up before I created my Intro for today's afternoon blog, wouldn't it?  Still, better late than never.  Art!

     You'll be delighted to know that the minimum investment here is £2,000.  They claim to have £100 million in assets, which is great for them, except they're not getting £0.01 from Conrad.  I don't even drink the stuff!  I shall leave it to you to check them out, as they don't seem to appear on Companies House, the first port of call to assess legitimacy, which is not great.

Our Journey With Bernie

This 

1993 Bernie Wrightson Master of the Macabre (Frankenstein Subset)

 card set is hard to find pictures of and I may have to give up on it.  There is no picture extant on teh Interwebz for #4 "The Lecture", only the rear of the card with Bernie's note.  Art!

     Unusually for these notes, very clear and legible, just no cover picture to go with it, only the cut-down display version.  O well.

Finally -

My friend Richard usually puts on 'Crisis Point' in April, a small wargaming convention, this time focussing on the fictional Black Sea republic of Andreivia, which has inherited all the ills (and military hardware) of the old Soviet Union.  There is usually the Andreivian Government, the Turkish-backed militia, the Armenian-backed militia, the Ruffians and possibly NATO as well, in what can often end up as a five-sided conflict.  Art!

     It looks like Conrad will be able to attend, since our car's clutch has been replaced at vast expense, and the Snake Pass has not been closed due to subsidence, landslides or Chechen rebel holdouts.