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DJ Carey (R) walking into court today.
DJ Carey
‘A stunning fall from Grace’: Court hears complex Deception by DJ Carey continued for years
A man whose wife had cancer, a man whose wife had died, and a father of five were among the victims.
THE TOTAL AMOUNT that former hurler DJ Carey swindled from his victims in an elaborate fraud ruse which continued on for years was finally laid bare Dublin’s Circuit Court today.
He owed just under €400,000 and of that he has repaid just over €44,000.
Specifically, the court heard in total that the former GAA star defrauded €394,127 and $13,000 US dollars from the injured parties. €44,200 has been repaid, leaving €349,927 and $13,000 US dollars outstanding.
The full extent of his deceit, too, became chillingly clear.
He faked letters from a doctor in a cancer centre in Seattle – where he was never a patient – and he showed a couple he took money from scars on his head and said they were from cancer treatment that had gone wrong.
DJ Carey never had cancer, the court heard today.
But the wife of one of his victims did: Ger Kirwan’s wife Margaret.
She was diagnosed in February 2021, and when Ger Kirwan informed Carey of that, Carey said that he had the same kind of cancer (multiple myeloma).
It was more detail than he’d given in his deceptions up until that date. Over the phone he told Ger Kirwan that he needed €4,000 in September 2021.
Later, after gardaí had started their investigation into Carey, Margaret went to give a statement in Waterford garda station while she was actually undergoing cancer treatment.
The stories that Carey told his victims varied somewhat but generally fit into the same narrative: that he had cancer, that he was waiting on a payout from St James’s Hospital for a cancer misdiagnosis – in his dealings with consultant Tom Brennan, who he had gone to school with, Carey changed this detail and said that he’d been exposed to the wrong dose of radiation during treatment – and in some cases, that he owed money to AIB.
He eventually repaid Margaret and Ger Kirwan in full following his arrest, but there were many others that he did not repay at all.
The 54-year-old has been told to expect a custodial sentence by Judge Martin Nolan after he plead guilty to 10 counts of inducing people to give him money after fraudulently claiming to have cancer.
Another eight cases are being taken into consideration by the court, involving another ten people.
Prosecutor Dominic McGinn told the court that the garda investigation began because a financial institution raised concerns with them when an elderly woman attempted to transfer a large amount of money to Carey.
On foot of this, gardaí sought court orders to enable them to obtain Carey’s financial records.
One of the 10 counts he plead guilty to pertains to money he received from Sharon and Mark Kelly.
He told the Kellys that he needed money to travel to Seattle for cancer treatment.
He showed the couple a scar on his head and said it was from treatment that went wrong, McGinn told the court.
On 3 June they transferred €25,000 to Carey, of which they were eventually repaid just €7,000.
Count 7, the prosecution said, pertains to over €16,300 Carey received from Aidan Mulligan, to whom he also made the claim that he needed to travel to the US for cancer treatment. Mulligan was the president of the handball association Carey was a part of.
He met Carey through his late wife. Carey got back in touch with Mulligan to offer his condolences when he learned of his wife’s death.
In the same conversation, Carey told him that he needed to travel to the US for cancer treatment, and said he’d missed some appointments due to his financial circumstances.
On 10 June 2022 Mulligan transferred Carey €5,000 and he later sent a further €3,000.
Then in September 2022 Carey told him that he only had the €2 in his pocket, and asked for €250. Generously, Mulligan gave him €500. He was never repaid.
Relentless
Prosecutor Dominic McGinn painted a picture of how Carey pursued funds from people in a relentless fashion.
In the case of Peadar Hughes, a man Carey knew through playing handball, Carey went to his house following a phone call and said he needed money as he was sick.
He then proceeded to drive Hughes to his local banking branch, which was closed, and then drove him to another bank.
It was only when they were in the bank that Carey told Hughes he needed €3,000, which Hughes transferred to him.
That was February 2022, and the following month Carey paid the money back.
Defence lays out mitigating factors
Carey was generally stoney-faced in court as details of his fraud was outlined, but he did clutch his hands together tightly as his defence counsel Colman Cody laid out how he has been “humiliated” and “ridiculed” publicly.
Cody said that Carey had undergone a “stunning fall from grace”, becoming a pariah.
He said that Carey was someone who had suffered great financial difficulty, and that he in recent years has lived a transient life, and had become a person of no fixed abode.
The arresting officer Garda Detective Sergeant Mick Bourke said that he was aware Carey has been sleeping in his car at times.
Carey’s suffering at the hands of his own actions was not the only personal account that the court heard, however.
Thomas Butler, an older man who worked as a financial controller, told the court that he was not the kind of person who had money to spare, and that he had come into a lump sum of money at the time in his life that Carey started asking him for money.
He said it was awful that Carey had used cancer as the basis of his lies. As someone who volunteers as a van driver for the Irish Cancer Society, Butler was particularly sympathetic to these lies.
A father of five, he ended up giving Carey over €16,000.
“As a true Kilkenny supporter all my life I’m not comfortable giving this victim impact statement,” Butler said.
“But it has to be done,” he added.
Carey will be sentenced at 1pm on Monday.
Judge Nolan made sure to tell the victims of Carey’s fraud that though they may feel “foolish”, they were not foolish, that they were “generous” and “good people” who tried to help someone they believed to be in need.
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