RTE Investigates have some great programmes. Tonights looks great!
yeah the scam is perfectly plausible becasue it preys on people who are desperate. Back in 2013/4 a brother of a friend of mine was going through a complete financial crash. He is a single father (wife died of cancer) and lost his job in the crash and him and his two daughters were losing the family home. I met him a few times during that period and he looked like a ghost and was riddled with depression, stress and anxiety. If someone like Catriona Carey walked into his life Ive no doubt he would have fallen for the scam, people in huge financial distress are not thinking straight and thats what these scammers are preying on. Its fine for people to say they were naive but when people are under the huge stress of losing their family home they will do anything to save it.
Fair enough but why were they acting so passive 2 years down the road when it was pretty obvious she had swindled them!
In the normal course of trading and things get difficult, that is true.
But for fraud like this you cannot hide behind a company.
Nope. Most likely someone in the serviced offices she had them addressed to passed them on.
Or possibly a family member who happened upon them. No love lost amongst them
You've got the answer already- being "timid" 2 years on just shows how VULNERABLE these people are.
Have you never read an article on "romance fraud"- where women, and men, send 10's of thousands of pounds, euros, dollars to a fraudster having never met them or even seen them? And still, towards the end of that scam which can last a few years, they still think that maybe it's all just a bad dream, or a mistake, or a simple misunderstanding.
And also, if you HAVE given over lots of money to a fraudster, you're hanging on to the chance that they MIGHT repay you- so the last thing you want to do is, PIZZ them off.
And it's all about NUMBERS- the more people the fraudsters contact, the more people they can scam- person not taking the bait? ; fine, then move on to the next person.
THat's how it works. And I'd never criticise someone who falls for such scams because vulnerable people are just that- vulnerable- and the fraudsters know that- so they search them out- a numbers game- at some stage, they'll come across a vulnerable person- then, the money starts rolling in.
She could try to argue that ez living was furniture for office , the overseas trips were business related, etc, but the onus would be on her to prove it to Revenue if asked to. If she can't then she would be taxed on the expenditure as a drawing from the business.
I'd say she's already working on excuses 😏
Bollox- if you scam someone from the outset, the accountancy and company laws go out the window- it's plain and simple theft and fraud. Stop making the simple complex. If you operate an illegal company doing illegal things, it's illegal - there's no rocket science here.
Chill out mate. Did she scam you?
Revenue would need to see where the business connection was.
Ski trip? Not a chance.
Office furniture? - let's see it.
Moncler jacket - not business related
Car - has she paid BiK?
I know how Revenue work thanks. I was just explaining that she can try to make her case. Which would be hilarious to be in the room for.
That's a little Harsh 🤔 it's perfectly reasonable to assume this charleton knows every , trick and excuse in the book
If you say so.
Banks repossess homes as a very last resort. Banks, despite what they're perceived like, will work with people if the client engages and puts effort in. I mean, these "mortgage difficulties", I assume, arose from mortgages gotten during the boom times (how else would they be in negative equity?). So that's like 10+ years of mortgage difficulties and they're only getting around to repossessing now.
Just have a look at one of the victims in Careys scam. Carey told them she owned the mortgage now, yet the original lender was sending letters to them and instead of contacting the lender, they contacted the fraud Carey. Obviously they paid 0 on the mortgage in the last 2 years as well, (why would they pay a mortgage to a lender who they believe doesn't own the mortgage anymore).
Eh? I'm purely giving two possible ways rte got the details.
I'm not "saying so", just giving a couple of plausible possibilities.
The family had a very public split. A large amount of money went missing from DJ's company while she was there.
This led to him having to liquidate and losing an awful lot of his savings.
Sorry Wasn’t an attack on you- but company law will not hold any weight on this case-if it’s true that there was a masquerade as an accountant or regulated financial services company, that in itself is years behind bars- and that’s even before the alleged acquisition of property and funds under false pretences- it’s a big book to be thrown here - hiding behind company law will be laughed out of court
I don't see how she won't be put behind bars.
If scamming people out of half a million, pretending to offer financial service that leads to nothing, spending "company" money on trips to hotels and BMWs, doesn't get someone put in jail, then it's a free for all. What's stopping anyone pretending to be a charity for example and collecting money??
I hear you and I can only imagine , Revenue have heard it all before , could you imagine interviewing this individual, I'd personally loose it myself 😏
Not at all- but all these posts about hiding behind company law are total rubbish- and sorry I wasn’t attacking you only the post -
I am a qualified accountant by the way, but anyone can call themselves an accountant. It's not a protected term. And I'm not sticking up for her here whatsoever. Just pointing out that this isn't the way to go after her. Tax evasion is probably the best avenue.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/consumer/professional-titles-are-not-always-a-guarantee-1.1815540
Use of the Term 'Accountant' As the law currently stands, there are no legal provisions under the Companies Acts preventing the use of the term 'accountant' by persons who are not members of an accountancy body.
You'd actually have far more of a believable case if you did set up as a charity. This story merely reminds me of selling O'Connell bridge to tourists. It's not complex
something like this perhaps??🤭
The country is full of such 'charities' with big salary CEOs
Yes, it’s plausible that a family member or an office worker would have private bank statements.
Oi! She’s nicked my bleeding avatar!
She’s feiced- that’s 20 years to life 😛
Tbf, Carey made a bags of things without her help. He alleged she swindled 1 million from him, but they recovered about €200000 of it. But Carey himself put himself close to ten million in debt. And left his ex-fiancee completely broke. They co-signed each other's loans, acting as guarantors to one another, thus allowing them to maximise their own personal borrowings.
When DJ's businesses (three of them, I believe) fell flat on their face, he ended up owing close to €10-15 million on the loans, but was able to negotiate repayments with his bank. She, on the other hand, wasn't so fortunate. She was left with major debts due to her co-signing on Carey's loans.
Owned a Chalet, that cost about 15 million, but then sold for 12 million, to help repay her debts. She eventually had a stroke due to the stress she was put under.
Catriona Carey was most definitely no saint, but to blame her entirely for the mess that became DJ's businesses is a stretch.
They're cut from the same cloth, and seem as dodgy as one another.
Yes but it’s the fraud aspect and fraud legislation that you would start with, say the Criminal Justice theft and fraud offences act 2001- claiming to be an accountant when not, if that’s what she was doing. would be certainly seen as supporting a case of say making gain or causing loss by deception
And of course The Anti Money Laundering act which provides for wonderfully lengthy sentences might also be considered if applicable and evidence was available-for people to say she might hide behind some form of protection her company might provide is just laughable
https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2001/act/50/section/7/enacted/en/html#sec7
The banks have only sold some of the celtic tiger distressed loans in the last year or two. There are properties for auction on BIdx1 at this moment and the loanns were drawn down in 2004-2008 and a receiver was only appointed in the last few months. There is a long lkist of possession cases in every circuit court in the country and it is almost invariably the case that the loan is a Celtic tiger era loan.
People wouldn't have been going to Carey unless they were already in arrears and under pressure from the loan provider. When a property is in serious negative equity as many are with a deficit between market value and outstanding loan of over €100k giving the mortgage provider €35lk would be just throwing good money after bad.
It's certainly more plausible than those same bank statements being filed with Companies House in the UK which would never happen.
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