‘I have faced the most horrific abuse’ – Catriona Carey says media coverage ‘unfair’ • 3h ago

Convicted fraudster Catriona Carey has requested a meeting with RTE’s outgoing Director General Dee Forbes — claiming the station’s coverage of the Careysfort mortgage scam has been ‘unfair’ to her.

The disgraced former camogie player — who was arrested in April by the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB) and questioned about a six-figure scam targeting distressed mortgage holders — sent copies of her email of complaint to the Garda Commissioner, the Press Ombudsman and the Taoiseach.

Carey was the subject of the hard-hitting RTE Investigates documentary The Accountant, The Con, The Lies, which was broadcast in February 2022.

The programme used secret recordings of meetings and phone calls to expose Carey and the details of a fake mortgage buy-back scam run through her company Careysfort Asset Estates.

The programme later won the Ireland Television Award for 2023 in the News and Current Affairs category.

Describing herself in her email to RTE as a “vulnerable single mother of two”, Carey complains the programme has left her with “no opportunity for a fair trial”.

“I am not even a public figure and played hockey to crowds of less than 50 people 20 years ago, never used social media or wish to be a public figure and your programme has led to the most horrific abuse and scrutiny anyone could ever face without the truth being established or even yet to reach a court of law,” she wrote.

“I have no opportunity for a fair trial, the media and RTE are now the new judge and jury in this case.”

After the programme was broadcast in February 2022, Carey gave an interview in which she admitted that up to €200,000 deposited into Careysfort accounts by desperate homeowners had been spent by her on personal items including holidays, a €55,000 BMW and designer clothing.

She admitted that money was gone and not recoverable.

However, she claimed at the time that she had believed a third party, convicted fraudster Patrick Maher, had access to a fund that was separately being used to fund the purchase of the loans.

Maher (55), from Wexford, was appointed joint secretary of Careysfort in the UK in December 2021, having been appointed to the same role with an Irish registered version of the company two years earlier.

He is currently awaiting sentence on four unrelated counts of obtaining monies by deception and a further count of conning a woman out of her car.

Speaking after Carey’s interview was published, he denied her claims.

In her email to RTE, Carey repeatedly takes issue with the fact that Maher wasn’t identified during the programme.

She also complains about the level of media scrutiny she has been subjected to.

“I am a vulnerable single mother of two,” she wrote.

“I can point to many cases before the courts that do not receive the amount of media scrutiny that I have been subject to…

“I have yet to find a case where a person is only alleged to have done something and to which have been treated like this in Ireland is extremely rare, especially when they are a private citizen and not a public figure as you try to claim by attaching my very low profile hockey career.

“So, all of this intense media scrutiny is not normal for private citizens.

“I now request a meeting with Dee Forbes and the programme editor for RTE Investigates immediately.”

Carey’s email was sent to RTE on Saturday May 27 — two days after RTE Investigates revisited the case to highlight how victims were questioning the pace of the ongoing garda investigation.

Referring to the garda investigation, victim Phil Conway told RTE: “I don’t think it is effective, the pace that it is going.”

“If they [gardai] only had an allegation and they had to go and investigate everything I can totally understand that, but we gifted them everything.”

“Bank account, transaction reference numbers, they were given it.

“She took our money, and she spent it.”

Catriona Carey’s previous conviction for fraud dates from 2020 when she was convicted of fraud and theft.

She forged a cheque to make it payable to her rather than the payee intended by the business that hired her as an accountant.