[SPEAKER_03]: So Wes, we've been to a distillerity that we really had a good time at.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been to a lot of the sellers, I had a good time at.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of them uncle nearest is facing a one hundred and eight million dollar lawsuit.
[SPEAKER_03]: One hundred and eight.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's quite a few dollars.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is a few dollars and if you want to hear the details and what the likely outcome is going to be, then stick around.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get into that breaking news.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to thank the Patrons first.
[SPEAKER_01]: We sure do because they are the reason we are on this platform whether you're watching on YouTube or Spotify or listen on any podcast streaming platforms.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all made possible by our patrons.
[SPEAKER_01]: So those names you see on the screen right now don't get too jealous.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just in the top few tiers of the Patreon packages.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a ton of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's lots of options.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll tell you more about it at the end of the show, but we can't start without thanking you guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: So thanks.
[SPEAKER_03]: So for those of you out there that are maybe enough super familiar with the Uncle Nearest Brand, pretty awesome origin story.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, really.
[SPEAKER_03]: So back in the eighteen hundreds, there was a slave named Nathan Uncle Nearest Green and Nearest Green was rented out by his slave owner to a Baptist minister who somehow felt that it was moral for him to rent slaves but not own slaves.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as is the case, back then, Baptist ministers also reformers in that area of the country.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as was the case, they had to convert their brain into whiskey so that it would preserve its value and they could sell it someplace else.
[SPEAKER_03]: And nearest role was to convert their ministers' grain into whiskey.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah, not a bad job.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, like, you're whiskey.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, at the time, young Jack Daniels father died in the Civil War, and his stepmother was not a huge fan.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, she turned him over as a ward to the Baptist Minister, and the Baptist Minister basically put him in the care of Nearest.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, nice.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, Jack Daniels was working in the little distillery there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Nearest had a son that was Jack Daniels age named George.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they grew up together.
[SPEAKER_03]: George and Jack.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, George and Jack.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was always this photo that caused a lot of questions that the Jack and Daniel Sustillery, there's two interesting elements about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hopefully you can find the photo and put it up here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we put it up here.
[SPEAKER_03]: So one thing you notice is that Jack Daniels is standing and everyone else is sitting, but there's the same height and it's because he was diminutive and he didn't want to look short.
[SPEAKER_03]: So he stood while everyone else set.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other thing is, at his right hand, is an African American at that time in the United States, that would have been odd, especially in that area of Tennessee.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, we later found out that that was actually his best friend, and Jack Daniels was probably not racist at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that individual was actually involved in the early startup of the Jack Daniels Distillery.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when all of that information came out, it was pretty obvious that he had been erased from Jack Daniels history due to racial motivations.
[SPEAKER_03]: Lim Mottlow was Jack Daniels nephew.
[SPEAKER_03]: He took over the brand because Jack Daniels dive in those sons.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are no errors.
[SPEAKER_03]: He took over the brand after prohibition.
[SPEAKER_03]: Basically, he was a known racist and probably erased any history of African Americans being involved.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when nearest descendants found out about this history, they ended up creating the whiskey company uncle nearest in two thousand and six teens.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's kind of the backstory.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, really cool distillery.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, when we went there, it's like an old horse farm or ranch or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like horse stables, beautiful landscape, just a really cool spot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and when we were there, it's kind of impressive how large scale the operation was.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, they went big from the start.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that course racing ranch was three hundred acres.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's where they started.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, most distillery started with some little bit of plays when they grow into that.
[SPEAKER_03]: They were sourcing whiskey from Dickle and a very secretive company called Tennessee Distilling Group, TDG.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so TDG makes a lot of the single girls that you'll get from Heavens Door, Bob Dylan's brand.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's real sentiment forward, and then Dickle has that be vitamin note that I notice, but some people take whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: and they blend those together to make the uncle nearest releases, and they start it off with a hundred million dollars in capital.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not a bad start.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll get you a horse rancher.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dad, that'll get you going for sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, nice hat.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, thanks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice landed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice rocks class.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice travel case.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice blintopper.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice candle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice bottle bag.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a nice tumbler.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice woman's t-shirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, thanks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice extra smedient shirt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get yourself some nice stands.
[SPEAKER_00]: And get all the compliments that come along with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shop bourbonrilltalk.com.
[SPEAKER_03]: the the bank has made some some claims right and they say they claim that they're into faults on this hundred and eight million dollars worth of loans and they are suing for receivership okay so real quick receivership what is that so we're mostly familiar with a lot of people convert like confused receivership with bankruptcy okay and so receivership is when a creditor
[SPEAKER_03]: goes to the courts and say courts, we need you to take control of this business away from the people who are running it because we're owed all this money and we don't believe that the way that they're running the business is proper and we think that you need to take control or we're going to lose our investment.
[SPEAKER_03]: bankruptcy is the opposite direction.
[SPEAKER_03]: Bankruptcy is where the creditor goes to the bankruptcy court and says, hey, these creditors, they're on me, I've got a good plan to turn things around, or I'm just gonna liquidate either way.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just want you to get them off of me while I go through this process, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so this was where the creditors actually pursued, and they're asking for the courts to basically take over control.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other option the uncle nearest had was to file chapter eleven where they'd have to file They'd go to courts and say they get these guys off me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna show you my turnaround plan.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: The turnaround and the the problem with that is that the courts can reject your turnaround plan
[SPEAKER_01]: So under the receivership, they would actually be removed.
[SPEAKER_01]: They'd be removed.
[SPEAKER_03]: The courts would find somebody probably from the whiskey industry that had experience running a business during difficult times to come in and start running the business.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's kind of the difference.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have some other episodes coming out that are about the stories that fall bankruptcy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of them are seven, some of them are eleven.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some are trying to save it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of them are just like we're just going to sell everything off and pay everybody the best that we can.
[SPEAKER_03]: But this was a situation where uncle nearest would not take the actions that the creditor wanted.
[SPEAKER_03]: The creditor probably would have preferred that they file bankruptcy because then there is a trustee that oversees all of their behaviors and make sure that anything that they're doing doesn't
[SPEAKER_03]: It rode their position in the business, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they probably would have preferred, but because they were just not doing anything, the creditors said, okay, let's go have the courts take over.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what's the, what's kind of the bank's claim here?
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, they don't get their own money, but above and beyond that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, there were a number of claims that came out, uh, so the, the baked first of all is, uh, is a, is a Louisville base bank.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's farm credit, Mid-America.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're known for, uh, loaning money inside the bourbon industry.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of one of their specialties.
[SPEAKER_03]: They filed their lawsuit on July the twenty-eighth.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I don't know when this is gonna come out, but it was just not too long ago, just a few weeks, just a couple weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_03]: They claim that they're in default on one hundred and eight million dollars worth of loans, and they've been in default since January of twenty twenty four.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so what's interesting about that is they're like, bro, we've been trying for over a year and a half to resolve this.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a last ditch effort to try and make sure we're taking care.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, they also claimed that the, the, the, the stillary just wasn't responding to information requests.
[SPEAKER_03]: So they're like, we're willing to work with you, but you gotta give us the information.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we can see that you're doing the right things.
[SPEAKER_03]: Another interesting thing, they actually didn't just sue the company.
[SPEAKER_03]: They are also suing fun and Keith Weaver individually.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, really, love a beyond it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're the owners, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: They are the executives, founders, all of that stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: But they've made some claims against Keith and fun specifically saying that they've misappropriated some funds and that they should also be personally liable for these debts because of what they did with the money.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what, what are they claiming they did with the money?
[SPEAKER_03]: One big public thing is they bought a two point two million dollar home in Martha's then you're very modest.
[SPEAKER_03]: Very modest and so you know you can imagine you've got this person that's all all of a sudden the face of this like
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Huge brand.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's tons of media of attention because of the, you know, the, the racial implications of writing this wrong from, you know, the early, nineteen hundreds, late, eighteen hundreds, and we're finally getting the truth out there and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: And before the company even starts making money, they start living that Martha's Vineyard Lifestyle, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to, I mean, every successful distillery starts with your first purchase being a nice house on Mother's Vineyard.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, every successful distillery requires a mansion on Martha's house.
[SPEAKER_03]: At least two million dollars.
[SPEAKER_01]: At least two million dollars.
[SPEAKER_01]: They kind of went in low, I'd say.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, honestly, in about one point five billion, you should assume your business is gonna, you need the bigger house, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So, the distillery, also, according to the bank, overstated the value of their inventory, which was basically barrels by twenty one million dollars.
[SPEAKER_03]: They also claim that they sold barrels to pay liabilities that were due to other creditors.
[SPEAKER_01]: And not to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So even some of the barrels they claimed value in, they were already going to sell off for other collateral.
[SPEAKER_03]: You were on the right route.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you're going to see why those two factors in alignment with one another.
[SPEAKER_03]: They also claimed that they factored their receivables without permission.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what does that mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Factoring, receivable.
[SPEAKER_03]: So basically, if you're a business, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And you've sold product, but you sell product on terms.
[SPEAKER_03]: So typically in the liquor industry, you will allow your wholesaler to pick up your bottles and they don't have to pay you for thirty days, typically.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you've got a million dollars worth of receivables that are due in the next thirty days.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you need money today.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there are their kind of banks that are out there that go, hey, we'll buy your million dollars worth of receivables for nine hundred thousand dollars right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now when that million dollars comes in, we're going to keep that hundred thousand dollars.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's our profit.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they, the farm credit, Min America says,
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, these receivables that we were owed on, because we generated those receivables with the original loan that we gave them.
[SPEAKER_03]: They went out and borrowed money against those again, sold them at a discount, and all of that already belonged to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there are multiple sources of
[SPEAKER_01]: Lones and collaterals that they're dealing with.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is not another element that came out was that in their bank loan it stated that, hey, we're going to give you this hundred and eight million dollars, but whatever you do with it, it has an increase the value of the company.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't spend it and it decrease the value of the company.
[SPEAKER_03]: So your network always has to be at least equal to a greater than the loan balance, and they claim that they failed to maintain that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so based on all that they said we need the court to appoint a receiver because in and I quote Okay, because based on our reading of this situation This situation requires an adult in the room.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh
[SPEAKER_03]: So the bank basically said in court, the weaver's are behaving as a child would if you gave him access to make a count.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of claims against these weaver folks and they're distillery.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what are their claims?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what are they said?
[SPEAKER_01]: What is their reasoning or yes excuses for all of this misallocation of
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's interesting because when you hear public claims because Faun has gone online and she's released some videos and then there are court transcripts of things that Keith has said in the hearings and whatnot and basically everything that they're saying is that the distillery is on a path to success everything is fine of course.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're just facing some cash flow issues, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: They're basically saying, hey, we're profitable.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're good.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just that we're just waiting for the cash to come in, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And he also said in court, you know, basically judge, you don't need to worry because we are still solvent.
[SPEAKER_03]: right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, which means their value exceeds their line of abilities they have out there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Basically, they, yeah, he's saying we're still, we still have enough value to cover all everything that we owe everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, what are they saying about their little shack on Martha's Vineyard?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what's their excuse for that?
[SPEAKER_03]: So they, they actually claim, and I believe in, that they were authorized by Farm Credit, Min America to buy that house.
[SPEAKER_03]: They said that it was it was part of the plan they explained to him like we're gonna buy this house We're gonna host industry events here and it's gonna help go the brand Okay, so so and so far as I can tell farm credit in America does not dispute that fact and so they're like hey Not only did they know we were gonna buy it but in twenty twenty three the bank officers actually came and visited us.
[SPEAKER_03]: They know
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they fully knew about the house, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the other big thing, because, you know, this claim that they were overstated the value of their inventory by twenty one million dollars, fine says, hey, we are not criminals.
[SPEAKER_03]: We didn't have anything to do with this.
[SPEAKER_03]: We are victims.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, in the situation.
[SPEAKER_03]: We are victims of fraud, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so what they said was that they had a former CEO named Mike Sanzan Kees.
[SPEAKER_03]: Was out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, yeah, basically Mike was out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Super good guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, uh, uh, right with who overstated the collateral, uh, and that the weavers had nothing to do with it.
[SPEAKER_03]: They didn't even know he was doing it.
[SPEAKER_03]: They said we fired him.
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, we are doing an internal investigation.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're gathering information.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, we're going to turn it over to the authorities.
[SPEAKER_03]: They said that SEC and also, um, uh, another federal entity and that they're not perpetrators or co-conspirators.
[SPEAKER_03]: This guy did all of this stuff on their own and he should be held accountable.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we just got this real nice house.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't even know how it happened.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, they knew that they were going to buy the house with the money, but you know, put their clothes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: But, uh, well, and then in the baked and dispute that, uh, but there's some other information that came out later, uh, that we're going to talk about in a second that makes that a little more nefarious than, um, than it seems on the surface.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah, Keith basically told the judge, um, that
[SPEAKER_03]: placing them under receivership would kill the brand because the brand is nothing without fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: She is the face of the brand.
[SPEAKER_03]: He said it would be catastrophic to the judge.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if they're saying that they can turn it around, you take her out of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no hope.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no hope.
[SPEAKER_03]: It turned it around is what is what Keith says.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what he's saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's a great husband.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so those are the facts as publicly stated that we know so far.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's... Okay, so we've got a group of people in a bit of trouble.
[SPEAKER_01]: They, they own a part of owning and running a distillery.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's someone else here who's also been a part of running a distillery in a brand.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what are your thoughts kind of thinking from their perspective, the banks perspective, all these perspectives?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you kind of, what are your assessment of everything?
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a good question.
[SPEAKER_03]: So let's talk about two brands that started off with a hundred million dollars.
[SPEAKER_03]: Uncle Nearest.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And a vodka brand called Deep Eddies.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now everybody who wants to be an independent bother and grow your brand to an enormous size and sell it for hundreds of millions of dollars in just a few years, all site deep Eddies.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I've had the advantage of talking to
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the attorneys that was involved in the defense process, and actually one of the attorneys, but it was a business associated.
[SPEAKER_03]: So he had inside information.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he said that it was started by a billionaire who set aside one hundred million dollars, and his goal was to lose one hundred million dollars in five years growing volume.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so if you have money, if you're going to lose money to build brand width and depth in the market, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: The best way to do it is to sell your product at a price that probably your competitors can't afford, you may actually be losing money.
[SPEAKER_03]: And spending a ton of money on all types of sales incentive programs, local sales reps that represent your brand and all that stuff, and that's what deep eddy did.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that they had built up a network that was so large that somebody else that was going to come in and strip out all that expense and can get to market for cheaper because they were larger saw the value in it that you sell for three hundred fifty million dollars.
[SPEAKER_03]: What you probably shouldn't do
[SPEAKER_03]: is rely on the face of one individual thinking, hey, this person's so famous and so popular that all they have to do is tell people to drink this whiskey and they will.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I'm not as famous as Juan Weaver, but I do have a pretty large whiskey following on YouTube, and I gotta tell ya, it meant almost nothing to the prideful.
[SPEAKER_03]: It meant almost nothing.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I could do a handful of single barrels per year and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: But when you're talking about growing an international brand that's the size of uncle nearest, that requires a whole lot more than a famous face.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so the argument that she has to be involved or it's all going to fall apart, I don't mind that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, how many houses on Martha Smith or does Eddie have?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, he was already a billionaire, so I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: But he wasn't using.
[SPEAKER_01]: He probably owns Martha's manager.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and he wasn't paying a credit or interest on the hundred million dollars.
[SPEAKER_01]: He just had it.
[SPEAKER_03]: He just, he just threw it up there.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have a hundred million dollars in like disposable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, hey, I'm going to try to lose this in five years.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and it worked.
[SPEAKER_03]: He sold for three hundred and fifty.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, so I could probably do that with a hundred bucks.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, maybe after I could turn a hundred bucks into three fifty.
[SPEAKER_03]: If we went to the casino and I had a good run on a black tag table.
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's half before.
[SPEAKER_01]: Next bottle share coming to Winstar.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there you go.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Winstar.
[SPEAKER_03]: So for my perspective, it kind of makes sense that the creditor wanted to remove the weavers because they had already sold some barrels.
[SPEAKER_03]: It didn't say whether or not they sold them at the value that they were on the books for but chances are they didn't and they used it to pay other creditors.
[SPEAKER_03]: a lower level of priority.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I see why the creditor wants them removed.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there is a order of priority.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if they had filed bankruptcy, the trustee would not have allowed them to distribute those funds that way.
[SPEAKER_03]: But when you're in a desperate situation, you realize this bank loan is too big to fail.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: So they're probably not gonna, you know, go through the process to shut us down because they know they're gonna lose everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: But this little guy over here, he doesn't have as much to lose and he can create a big stink that messes everything up.
[SPEAKER_03]: So even though this person hired a level of priority, I'm gonna take money that kind of belongs to them and give it this little guy over here.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's gonna stay off the immediate problem.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's what it seems like what's happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: They go when I would like we talk about we know she has a famous fish we know she has some fame and is influential But what really?
[SPEAKER_01]: Experienced do they have to kind of justify being in this position that they found themselves in given all of that experience in in all that they've been through you know it's kind of interesting because the judge
[SPEAKER_03]: pointed out that there were some problems with that logic, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: The judge actually said to Keith, you appear to be out over your ski.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you're skiing and you're over your ski, as you tell him, he's saying, like, you're on a black dime and you need to be someplace else, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And the reality is, the weaver's didn't have distillery experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, if you start to ask yourself, like, how did they start off with
[SPEAKER_03]: You know at the time, it was one of the largest distilleries that had ever been launched.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: No one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you go?
[SPEAKER_01]: Only having a lot of experience to getting a hundred and eight million dollars to start at the distilleries.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got to think about the time period.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was a thousand and sixteen.
[SPEAKER_03]: So bourbon was booming.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: But there was also a political climate at the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: that, you know, it was starting to come out that there were these racial injustices, and there was a lot of pressure on lending institutions in whatnot, that if you had the opportunity to use your lending power to kind of write some of these wrongs you should, and so it was a good political move for them to back this kind of plan.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that it was kind of the perfect storm to go, okay, these people really aren't that experienced, but the story's really good and the markets seem to be really responsive to this type of stuff, so we're gonna, we're gonna bet big on this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And not that that was necessarily a bad idea.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you have to ask yourself, you've started a bunch of businesses.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've started a bunch of businesses.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've never gone to the bank and gone, hey, look at this overall big picture.
[SPEAKER_03]: Give me a bunch of money.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm going to start living the lifestyle today.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: that would normally be reserved until the business was actually producing enough profits to justify that lifestyle, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there is no doubt about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: The weaver started living a million dollar lifestyle long before the distillery was profitable enough to justify that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Along the lines of the thought that they found themselves in a situation that they maybe didn't have the experience for,
[SPEAKER_03]: I've personally been told of a couple of publics, nephews that find his ability to tell.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there was one ability?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was one instance.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not going to say who it was, but there was a highlight being placed on like women in whiskey and somebody that I knew was at this event.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there were luminaries from the Kentucky Bourbon industry and fun was making comments about the linking of county process like
[SPEAKER_03]: basically flash aging the product and that's why Tennessee whiskey was better than Kentucky whiskey.
[SPEAKER_03]: And not only is that blatantly untrue on its surface, which is shocking to somebody in our position, we know that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it also irritated other luminaries from the industry and they're like, listen, you just got here.
[SPEAKER_03]: You didn't necessarily earn your way into the position that you're in.
[SPEAKER_03]: And don't come up here and start preaching to us about things like this, especially when you're wrong.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there's been a handful of things like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: She did some videos kind of trash talking to Kilo when to Kilo story again popular and that irritate a lot of people.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's just been a handful of snafos like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when you put all that together, it seems like, you know, there is some evidence that they might be out over their scales.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and they may not have the experience that one would want.
[SPEAKER_03]: sure the judge's credit he did not immediately agree with bank and he's looking at both of them and saying bank you're the one that thought that they were good loan risk and now you want us to build you out
[SPEAKER_03]: And he actually said to Keith, he was like, you can talk all of this trash.
[SPEAKER_03]: You want about your CFO, but he was your CFO.
[SPEAKER_03]: You highly worked for you, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so another bit of information came out that influenced my opinion of the situation, which was, the weavers did have the authorization by the two point two million dollar house, but it also came out that they recalateralized that home.
[SPEAKER_03]: and borrowed another one point five million dollars against it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So basically they went to farm credit bureau and said, hey, you gave us a hundred and eight million.
[SPEAKER_03]: Cool with you if we spend two point two, we're going to use it for these purposes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they were like, yeah, sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: No problem.
[SPEAKER_03]: But in their minds, that asset was now part of the collateral that was meant to protect their loan.
[SPEAKER_03]: But because it was a master loan agreement and not a typical mortgage, they were able to go to a mortgage company and say, hey, we want to cash out one point five, but we own this house cash.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have no debt against this house, which was kind of not true.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the mortgage company loans one point five million.
[SPEAKER_03]: And now, if the house is still worth two point two, which probably isn't.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if it were,
[SPEAKER_03]: when the bank had two point two million dollars worth of protection.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now they only have seven hundred thousand dollars worth of protection.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that was something that came out and I was like, well, you might have permission to buy it, but what you did with the asset, that was a little shady.
[SPEAKER_03]: Probably not as good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Also in alignment with this idea that they borrowed money twice against the same asset.
[SPEAKER_03]: If they did factor their receivables,
[SPEAKER_03]: That is, in effect, a second time that they have borrowed money against the same asset, because those receivables were already laid claim to by farm credit min America, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: They expected that revenue that was generated was going to be used to pay back their loan.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then they sold that asset to somebody else at a discount, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, it looks like there's been multiple instances of them borrowing money against the same asset that was already clatterized on this loan.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, to me, it makes sense that the bank would say, hey, we need an adult in the room, these people are not making good choices and they're eroding our position.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, what could happen to this CFO and Fawn and Keith for that matter?
[SPEAKER_01]: CFOs like this, I mean, I feel like when they commit fraud and a large company is typically for themselves, but they end up on a prison, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, if you're a CFO and you're messing around and you get trouble with the SEC or the State Department, you're going to federal prison.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's not that I haven't seen it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've seen an outside CFO that was embezzling money and hiding it.
[SPEAKER_03]: and the way he hit it in his instance was he was hiding it in the payroll tax expense.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he ended up stealing one point six million dollars from a company and he went to federal prison.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was the one that discovered the fraud.
[SPEAKER_03]: So in this particular instance, this CFO, what he's been accused of is overstating the value of their barrel inventory.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so then you have to ask yourself, why would he do that?
[SPEAKER_03]: And the reason why he do that has already been revealed
[SPEAKER_03]: They would be in default to their loan if their net worth wasn't greater than the loan balance Okay, right and so if he starts looking and he goes remember earlier when I said we're gonna come back to this and if he starts looking and he goes oh crap We fire sold those barrels so that we could pay these other creditors and now that I have to take this stuff off the
[SPEAKER_03]: books.
[SPEAKER_03]: When I send the records to the bank, they're going to go, oh, you're in the fault of the loan because you don't have enough assets anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so what I have to do is say that the assets that we do have are actually worth twenty-one million dollars more than they really are, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's what seems to have happened in this situation.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the Weaver's claim that they had no idea this was happening and the CFO committed fraud on his own and that their victims.
[SPEAKER_03]: But he stood to gain nothing by committing this fraud.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean maybe maybe if he reported it to the bank honestly and they saw that they were into fault he was gonna lose his job So maybe they could argue like he wanted to make things look better But really it just looks like the company itself was kicking the can down the road and hoping they would find a way to turn things around before the bank figured out that they had lied right and so it makes it difficult for me to to believe that they had no idea this was going on
[SPEAKER_01]: right now has has the judge in this case taken any action yet like as he as he he or she I don't know I think the judge is male okay as he don't anything to take any action on this or is this kind of still in a limit it's in limbo one thing he did do was he said
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I'm not going to take control away from the weaver just yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not ruling on that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I am going to put an order in place that they're not allowed to sell off any more assets without court approval assets, even as that include whiskey or no.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the way that it's going to be structured is that they're able to bottle whiskey and sell to their food or normal business process.
[SPEAKER_03]: But they're not going to be able to factor receivables.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're not going to be able to sell barrel in the Tory to other not just seller producers.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think they're allowed to operate normally, but they're not allowed to sell off assets.
[SPEAKER_03]: which is kind of receivership light if you will.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're not putting somebody else in charge, but you're putting some stop losses in place to make sure that they don't engage in the behavior that they were accused of they're not being adults in the room.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he's also, which I thought was funny, considering a gag order.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because she's been pretty vocal on social media.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so he said, look, I don't want to trample on anyone's first amendment rights, but we may need to put a gag order in place.
[SPEAKER_03]: So he's considering that as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he kind of made fun of them for even needing it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you read the transcript, he's like, do I really have to put in an order to keep your mouth shut?
[SPEAKER_03]: And the court transcripts said, both sides shook their head.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I thought that was interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's what's going on.
[SPEAKER_03]: At this point, I can't predict exactly what's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think the uncle nearest brand will go away.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know whether or not I believe the weavers are the right people to turn this thing around.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if receiver ship would be better.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think the uncle nearest brand is going to be around for a long time no matter what.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's good for that legacy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and the stories incredible.
[SPEAKER_03]: So unfortunately, I don't have any uncle nearest whiskey to give away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or maybe you should start buying some to help support their court costs.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's a possibility.
[SPEAKER_03]: What we decided to do, which is the little tongue and cheek a little bit of a joke because because they've been accused of committing fraud to create success in the whiskey industry, we ask ourselves who else has done that?
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the most famous George Reamus and I happen to have
[SPEAKER_03]: hunds of remiss give some of that way get those remiss of remiss bottles out down there and honor of court cases and with yes uh... said so George remiss uh... was a famous bootlegger uh... the first a person to represent himself
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's temporary and sanity case and win.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we have some very nice bottles of remiss.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we're going to do five one-out sample packs that are going to include, I think I have a remiss, two, three, and six.
[SPEAKER_03]: The remiss repeal reserve.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I have the Gatsby reserve and the Volstet Act.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so actually there's none of the Volstet Act.
[SPEAKER_03]: So let's say, three, three, five outs, three, three, three, one out sample winners.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's three ounces in there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Three, one out sample winners.
[SPEAKER_03]: And tell them what they have to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, there's a couple of things you could do to enter into this beautiful giveaway.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're all super easy things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you don't do them, shame on you.
[SPEAKER_01]: First thing you need to do is like this video.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second thing is super easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just hit the subscribe button if you haven't already.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then ring the bell.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to make sure you ring the bell because every episode we give away free stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, when I say free, I mean free.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a hidden cost, you know, the pay shipping, you don't have to
[SPEAKER_01]: subscribe to anything other than the YouTube channel.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to cost you any money.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's free stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just want to give back to the community because that's what it's all about.
[SPEAKER_01]: The last thing you want to do is go into the description, find the web form next to the big capital where it's a giveaway.
[SPEAKER_01]: Click on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a Google form real easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just gives your big basic contact info and we'll run that in our randomized with everyone else who enters and we'll get our winner absolutely free.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're whiskey.
[SPEAKER_01]: And ship it out to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chris, little package it all up real pretty.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in route to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: End up on your doorstep and there you go.
[SPEAKER_03]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_03]: We had some fun on this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hopefully they have some fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you like this content and you want to support the channel, there's three different ways.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can buy merch at bourbonrilltalk.com.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have a lot of great things for whiskey lovers over there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Lots of opportunities for you to customize things because we have some lasers.
[SPEAKER_03]: We also have Patreon, which is a great way to support.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not only the creation of the content, but by extension, Wes and his ministry work in the Dominican Republic and Chrissy Land, who's a single mother.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's we are just always so grateful for that support and the last but not least I'm a real estate agent in the Dallas and Houston metro areas so if you need residential real estate services and either market please consider me and you can find links for all three ways to support the channel in the video description next to the giveaway link absolutely
[SPEAKER_03]: And if this your first time tuning into the channel, we'd love to tell you a little bit about why we do what we do.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Whiskey's great, but we're mostly about community and using Whiskey as a conduit to bring people together.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's something that became important to me when I lost my brother to suicide in, in, in, in, in.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I started looking for ways that I could make a difference in individuals' lives.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I saw that the kinds of connections that people form around their hobbies were the kind of connections that keep people bound in this world.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we started the channel, but we needed a forum for people to interact.
[SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of the forms were filled with negativity.
[SPEAKER_03]: We called the trolls.
[SPEAKER_03]: And those trolls started two things.
[SPEAKER_03]: One, we needed an own forum, which we have.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's Bourbon World Talk community.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's one of the world's largest Facebook-based bourbon groups and it is troll-free and it is free to join.
[SPEAKER_03]: The second thing that they taught us though is that if those individuals can hate strangers online, there's nothing that keeps us from loving strangers online.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why we end every episode the same way and that's this.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you woke up this morning, you're unsure whether or not anyone loved you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just know that we love you.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you next time on Bourbon World Talk.
[SPEAKER_03]: Cheers.