The new RTÉ docu-series Swindlers tell the stories of some of Ireland's most renowned con-artists and white collar criminals through the voices of the victims, friends and colleagues they scammed and deceived. Stranger than fiction, it explores how these crimes impact wider communities and leave a lasting imprint on people's lives - watch Swindlers now, via RTÉ Player.
Director Maurice Sweeney inroduces Swindlers below...
It’s almost a year ago to the day, as I’m writing this, since Director of Photography Alex Sapienza and I arrived in Dallas, Texas. We were there to film interviews for the first episode of a new series called Swindlers by Animo TV. One of those interviews was with Kim Parrish — a woman essential to the story we were trying to tell.
The problem was, Kim had gone quiet. She hadn’t been in contact with Producer Laura Dunne for several days. Dates had been agreed. She knew we were coming. And yet, there was nothing. No emails. No returned calls. Just silence.
By then, those silences had become all too familiar. Throughout the series, contributors had pulled out at the last minute. A relative had advised against it. Don’t wash your dirty laundry in public. Why would you admit that on national television?
We were making a true crime series about people who had been swindled out of money. But it quickly became clear that it wasn't the financial loss that caused people to hesitate. It was the betrayal — trusting someone, often someone close, and discovering that trust was misplaced. That emotional exposure was harder to endure than any monetary figure, particularly for Irish people, I felt.
As we drove east across Texas, I wondered if Kim’s nerves had finally got the better of her. The following morning, standing outside a roadside motel beneath the constant roar of the highway, I dialled her number again. The phone rang. And rang. Long enough to feel like a lifetime.
Then she answered.
In her warm southern drawl, Kim welcomed us to Texas and calmly gave directions to her home. Just like that, the shoot was back on.
It's about how fragile our sense of safety can be when placed in the wrong hands, and how easily trust can be weaponised.
There are interviews you walk away from knowing you've captured something rare. That day with Kim was one of them. Her life had been irrevocably altered by an Irish woman who entered it when Kim was just nine years old. Julia Holmes — just one of over forty aliases — became her stepmother, and for the next three decades Kim’s life would be turned upside down.
Julia left behind a trail of fraud, theft, domestic violence, an FBI manhunt, and ultimately a prison sentence for Kim’s father. Nervous at first, Kim slowly opened up, telling a story that was at turns heartbreaking, unsettling, darkly funny, and deeply revealing — but above all, honest.
Kim was just one of many voices that became integral to Swindlers. Those who agreed to speak on camera offered a rare insight into the damage left behind by narcissism and greed. In cases of fraud, it’s money that makes the headlines. But as the edit took shape, the dominant emotion expressed by both investigators and victims was not financial loss — it was betrayal, compounded by the indifference of the perpetrator.
And yet, those offenders had human stories too. The Celtic Tiger became a character in the series, providing a stage on which ambition and excess could flourish. Figures like Thomas Byrne and Harry Cassidy seemed driven by a belief that there were no limits. For me, the most compelling question wasn’t what they did, but when. When did ambition turn into greed? And when did greed cross the line into criminality?
Swindlers, for me, is a deeply human story — one that cuts across class, geography, and circumstance. It’s about how fragile our sense of safety can be when placed in the wrong hands, and how easily trust can be weaponised.
What stayed with me most wasn’t the scale of the frauds, but the quiet courage of those who chose to speak. In breaking their silence, they reclaimed something that had been taken from them — not money, but dignity. And often, that’s the hardest thing of all to get back.
Swindlers, RTÉ One, Wednesday 18 February at 9.35pm - catch up afterwards via RTÉ Player
