"Kilkenny's hero – the legend from Gowran, DJ Carey."
That’s how then GAA president Seán Kelly described the Kilkenny hurling captain as he presented him with the Liam McCarthy Cup at Croke Park in 2003.
He is no longer Kilkenny’s hero. Carey – a nine-time All Star and five-time All-Ireland senior hurling winner was remanded in custody on Friday ahead of sentencing on Monday for defrauding people by claiming he needed money for cancer treatment.
The court heard on Friday that Carey defrauded 22 people out of a total of almost €400,000, only €45,000 of which has been paid back.
Judge Martin Nolan said a custodial sentence was inevitable.
His guilty plea meant he avoided a trial. He pleaded guilty to defrauding 13 people, over a nine-year period from early 2014 to late 2022.
He had falsely claimed to them that he had cancer and needed financial assistance. Charges involving nine other people were taken into consideration.
One of those Carey pleaded guilty to defrauding, publican and devout GAA fan Noel Tynan, who lost €10,000, welcomed the conviction.
"Everybody else has to pay for their crimes if they get caught," Mr Tynan told Prime Time ahead of a special report on DJ Carey set to be broadcast on Tuesday 4 November.
Carey’s personal reputation may be in tatters, but his sporting reputation lives on. And it was that reputation in hurling-mad Kilkenny which made it so easy for him to defraud so many people over such a long period.
The fraud
At one level, his fraud was a straightforward confidence trick. People trusted him when he asked for money for medical treatment because he was a household name and widely viewed as a decent man.
Carey adopted a softly-softly approach to lure would-be victims.
In May 2022, for example, he texted a golf acquaintance.
"I hope all is well. Could you give me a call when convenient please. Kindest regards, DJ Carey."
A phone call followed between the two men. And then a text from Carey.
"Thank you for taking my call. Please see below."
Under that message, Carey supplied details of his bank account. But the man didn’t send any money.
The next day, after an apparent unanswered phone call, Carey followed up with a text: "Just giving a buzz to see if anything could be done. Apologies for asking. I’m a bit embarrassed."
The wording was polite; there was no hard sell.
We showed some of the text messages to Pat Lordan, a retired Detective Chief Superintendent at the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau.
"It's important that you don't upset the person that you're looking to provide you with the funding or the money. So, in the fraud cases we would deal with a lot, the door is always left open to you," Mr Lordan said.
Carey was not successful this time. His target declined the request, explaining that he had "just come out of a couple of very tough years" in his business.
He also told Carey that he had spoken "to a few people who I believe have either helped you or whom you have sought help from… Unfortunately, I am not in a position to be more helpful."
Carey responded to the rejection saying, "Apologies for any pressure... We’ll meet up soon please god."
Unsolicited text messages
Carey often targeted well-off people that he hardly knew. One businessman told Prime Time that he hadn’t heard from Carey for three decades and, one day, got an unsolicited text message from him.
Singer Daniel O’Donnell was among those who was made aware of Carey’s alleged health problems, though Carey didn’t ask him for money.
In an October 2022 text message seen by Prime Time, Mr O’Donnell enquired about Carey’s health with a prayer emoji: "Hi DJ. I hope you are doing ok. Daniel."
Carey responded; "Hi Daniel. Thank you for text. I’m doing well. I hope all is good with Majella and yourself."
Yet just a week later, in two text messages, Carey told a different story to a friend who he was deceiving.
"I’ve excepted [sic] what I have and I am going to take quality of life over more chemo and treatment. I will get 2 years and possibly 3... I’m very contented now tbh I’ve given it a good shot..."
While some of Carey’s targets were asked for a donation for his alleged cancer care, others were asked for a loan, which he promised to repay quickly. In many cases, Carey told victims that he was about to receive a compensation award of over €1.5m as a result of a medical negligence claim.
False claims
Carey told people that he was represented in the legal claim by Dublin solicitor Paul Meagher. It was complete fiction. There was no €1.5m award, and Mr Meagher never acted for him.
Mr Meagher told Prime Time that his company doesn’t practice "in the area of medical negligence claims against hospitals and doctors".
"Whatever case he was telling people he was involved in, we had no involvement," he added.
Carey often referred to Paul Meagher by his initials, PM. In a text to a friend in April 2022, for example, he wrote: "Here with PM". And in another he wrote, "I’m on phone with PM."
When asked, Mr Meagher said he was shocked to learn his name had been falsely linked to Carey’s fake cancer story.
"That I would be used in that way to convince people that I was acting for DJ. Our name was being used and abused and they were being misled. And I feel sorry for those people," Mr Meagher said.
It appears that Carey used Mr Meagher’s name because he is a long-time legal advisor to billionaire businessman Denis O’Brien.
"Obviously he used that association for his own benefit, but certainly I didn't know that, and certainly I never discussed it with Denis O'Brien," Mr Meagher said. "So that's another example of how names were used to misrepresent and mislead and con people."
According to several people in Kilkenny that spoke to Prime Time, Carey told them that Denis O’Brien was a major backer of him.
One of the charges Carey was convicted of today states that contrary to Section 6 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001, "On unknown dates between 1/1/14 and 18/9/22 at unknown locations within the state…" DJ Carey "did dishonestly by deception induce Denis O’Brien to do an act to wit make monetary payments to you after you fraudulently claimed to have cancer and needed finances to obtain treatment for same with the intention of making a gain for yourself and causing loss to another."
Carey did not respond to a request for interview and Mr O’Brien declined to comment. Carey’s regard for the businessman, though, has been well documented.
Back in 2015, Carey told RTÉ’s Ray D’Arcy in a radio interview, "I am a great admirer of Denis O’Brien, absolutely."
Asked by Mr D’Arcy why he admired him so much, Carey responded "He puts a huge amount back into this country... I think he is a very generous man."
Mr O'Brien was certainly very generous to Carey, who he first met in 1997. The court was told today that he gave him €125,182 and $13,000 (USD).
That included €60,000 to cover a debt settlement agreement reached by Carey with AIB in 2017. Under that agreement, AIB agreed to write off €6.4m of debt outstanding from a €9.5m judgement it secured in 2011. That debt arose mainly from property borrowings by Carey.
Mr O’Brien’s generosity didn’t stop there. He also supplied him with the use of an apartment in Dublin and a car. To back up his fake cancer story, Carey supplied two falsified medical letters to one of Mr O’Brien’s accountants purporting to be from a Dr Ed Libby, a US cancer specialist. The fake letters described Carey’s "cancer treatment."
Denis O'Brien said in a victim impact statement read in court on Friday that what Carey did was "inconscionable…deceitful, manipulative and cunning".
He said Carey came back "time and time again" to him looking for money. "To my embarrassment, I was completely duped by DJ Carey," he said.
At the time of the Ray D'Arcy interview, Carey spoke about various jobs that he was doing.
"I am very lucky, I am involved with Carlow IT as an ambassador, I look after the hurling with Carlow, I do a weekly column with the Mirror newspaper, I am with Newstalk and I am an ambassador for Topaz."
Newstalk and Topaz were then both owned by Mr O’Brien.
Earning potential
So why did Carey defraud people if he could make a living from various part-time jobs associated with his status as a GAA legend?
Partial financial records seen by Prime Time suggest his earning potential was significant.
In July 2008, he was paid €24,200 by ad agency Cawley Nea.
He was even able to make money from his charity work as a celebrity fundraiser for the Irish Heart Foundation. Bank statements seen by Prime Time show that he was paid €1833.33 monthly for at least 12 months from 2007, by the charity.
In a statement, the Irish Heart Foundation told Prime Time, "While our ambassadors typically give their time for free, there have been occasions, in line with other charities, where we have paid celebrities for their work with the Irish Heart Foundation."
Bank statements seen by Prime Time show that Carey’s work as a sports analyst with Newstalk’s Off the Ball programme alone paid €2,460 monthly.
That salary was paid for at least a year and half in 2015 and 2016 even though he appeared on the show only a handful of times in total.
The Topaz ambassador job was not his only corporate gig. Records show that he also received payment sporadically for promotional events from other businesses, too, including hotels.
"For somebody of his reputation and standing in the game of hurling and all he achieved, it would be very easy for him to monetise that," Mr Meagher said, adding that he would have "no problem filling a room at any event, given his legendary status in the game."
But, despite his room-filling capability, Carey had deep financial problems.
A cleaning supplies company he set up in 1994, DJ Carey Enterprises, had lost money for six straight years from 2004. In 2011, it went into liquidation.
In an interview on RTÉ’s Late Late Show in 2013, host Ryan Tubridy put it to Carey that the business "didn’t work out for you – it went pear-shaped?"
"Unfortunately, it did," Carey replied, adding that because there was a "legal situation" he couldn’t talk about it in detail.
The legal situation’ mentioned never made it to court. But it related to alleged unauthorised transactions at the company, including €164,334 in such transactions in the financial year ending March 2009 alone.
Carey hired an auditor to investigate. In an August 2009 email seen by Prime Time, the auditor wrote to a woman who was director and accountant at the firm until March 2009, "of the €80k of payments made to your personal credit cards by the company, we have received explanations for €15k," he wrote.
But the accountant, who we cannot name because she is before the courts on unrelated charges, said she had already "co-operated in every way" and would not engage further.
"Please discuss these issues with the new directors," she wrote.
Debts pile up
By 2011, Carey was even struggling to pay small debts. Prime Time has seen a letter from Bank of Ireland sent in April 2011 threatening Carey with legal proceedings over €1,193 arrears on a lease for a Toyota SUV.
Carey, however, had even bigger money problems. He owed AIB over €9.5m arising from loans to purchase three properties at the K Club in Kildare and Mount Juliet in Kilkenny.
In May 2011, AIB secured a judgement against Carey for €9.53m.
It appears that by around this time, Carey had begun falsely telling people in Kilkenny that he had a terminal illness.
"These types of fraud occur normally when people run out of road," retired Detective Chief Superintendent Pat Lordan said.
"They've invested too heavily. There's been an economic crash or something else has happened in their life and they need money to continue living the lifestyle they've been living or running the businesses, they've been running," Mr Lordan added.
They can no longer borrow in the normal way, he said, "So they go to their friends or business colleagues or people they know and, through one method or another, they get money from them."
'Terminal illness’
The illness that Carey told people he had was multiple myeloma, a rare and treatable, but incurable, blood cancer.
It was a story that he stuck to for many years, typically telling people that he was getting treatment in the United States.
In October 2021, he texted a friend: "I’m going to have another blood transfusion and hormone injection."
"Having it done now. It’s instructions from Seattle," he added.
"I had another transfusion and hormone injection. They said the dr will be calling me from Seattle between 4 and 5 they’re [sic] time"
Six months later, he told the friend "I also need to transfer funds to America for my own treatment."
A few months after, he was telling the same friend about other imaginary treatments. "Had tumours removed Thursday," the text read.
To others, he pretended that he was being treated at a hospital in Manchester.
Noel Tynan says he knew he had been defrauded when, shortly after he gave Carey €10,000 towards a course of alleged cancer treatment, he spotted Carey on television at a hurling game. Carey was supposed to be in a Seattle clinic at the time.
"I got caught and I just put it down to bad experience. I was lucky that it wasn't more than 10 grand," Mr Tynan said.
The irony is that, according to medical professionals, there is no need to go abroad for treatment for this type of cancer.
"Myeloma is something that the HSE has invested heavily in," Dr Patrick Hayden, consultant haematologist and clinical lead for the Myeloma Service at St James’s Hospital in Dublin.
Whether you're "diagnosed in London or Berlin or Boston, they don't have anything that we don't have available in Dublin and in Ireland," he said.
In a victim impact statement read in court on Friday, Thomas Butler, who gave Carey €16,360, said: "The fact that DJ used cancer as a means to obtain money under a false pretense was gut wrenching personally for me as both my parents died of cancer."
Mr Butler said he was also a volunteer driver for the Irish Cancer Society and that he's regarded as a very generous person, which "DJ took advantage of".
"I have five children and never had spare money to give them growing up," Mr Butler said, explaining he had paid Carey from his pension lump sum. "This could not have been nice for my children to observe who had never received a gift of substantial money from their father."
"As a true Kilkenny supporter all my life I am not comfortable writing this victim impact statement and any negative reflection it may have on the county due to DJs actions but it has to be done to ensure he no longer takes advantage of other innocent individuals," he added.
Local hero
In Kilkenny, Prime Time found a reluctance among those who knew Carey to speak about the case.
One local politician told Prime Time it would be "political suicide" to speak publicly about it. Over a dozen well-known figures from Kilkenny GAA were also approached. None wanted to speak on the record.
Mr Tynan believes that there is an unwillingness within GAA circles to speak out because Carey was such a talented hurler.
"It shocked me the amount of people that basically have been saying, ‘but look what he's done hurling’. As far as I am concerned, he committed a crime and that's it," Mr Tynan said.
However, there is a view shared by some in the GAA that, across social media in particular, ridicule of Carey and his entirely self-inflicted downfall has been excessive.
An image of Carey with an apparent phone charger up his nose mimicking a medical tube has been widely circulated, often accompanied by extreme mockery.
"It's not a victimless crime. He must pay for what he has done," Professor Paul Rouse from University College Dublin and author of ‘Sport & Ireland’ said. "But the unnecessary cruelty in the memes, in the circulation of jokes, in the repeated referrals to what he's done; it's too much."
Earlier this year, murals of some of Kilkenny hurling greats were painted on exterior walls of the county’s home ground, Nowlan Park.
Carey is among the greatest hurlers to have ever played for Kilkenny. But his picture is not on those walls.
"It's a tragic story about a fall from grace," said Mr Meagher, the solicitor who Carey falsely claimed had represented him in an invented medical negligence claim.
"I felt very sorry for him, but I felt much sorrier for the people who had been conned."
A special Prime Time programme about DJ Carey from reporter Paul Murphy and producer/director Sallyanne Godson is set to be broadcast on 4 November at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player.
