It is possible to get the dependency plugin to fail to recognize methods references.

For example, the following function declaration is the only place in its class where the Guava "Lists" class is referenced (apart from imports):

We choose to fail when declared dependencies are thought to be unused, and this usage is simply not detected, resulting in the following output and exception:

[WARNING] Unused declared dependencies found:
[WARNING]    com.google.guava:guava:jar:18.0:compile
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Caused by: org.apache.maven.plugin.MojoExecutionException: Dependency problems found
	at org.apache.maven.plugin.dependency.analyze.AbstractAnalyzeMojo.execute(AbstractAnalyzeMojo.java:187)
	at org.apache.maven.plugin.DefaultBuildPluginManager.executeMojo(DefaultBuildPluginManager.java:133)
	at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:208)
Will try to get a test and patch attached to this once I figure out where your test case class file resources are coming from.