At the heart of DJ Carey's cancer scam, for which he was jailed for five-and-a-half-years yesterday, were fake medical documents, aimed to deceive his victims.
Ten of those letters have been obtained by Prime Time as part of a special report on DJ Carey to be broadcast tonight, Tuesday 4 November.
The documents purport to outline Carey’s treatment for a rare blood cancer, multiple myeloma, and included the falsified signatures of doctors in the United States and England.
The letters were designed to reassure doubters, those who wondered how Carey could look so healthy if he were truly ill, by offering apparent documentary proof that he was sick.
Two of those bogus letters were supplied to the accountant of businessman Denis O’Brien, who gave Carey €125,000 and $13,000USD over a nine-year period.
They mix medical language and admiring comments. Prime Time understands that they were often left lying around his home, easily visible to visitors, in an apparent attempt to boost the credibility of Carey’s cancer story.
One, purporting to be from a doctor in the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle to DJ Carey, states: "It is our absolute belief that one day in the future there will be a full cure for cancer. Your courage and dignity along with amazing patience is staggering and it is the talk of all my colleagues and staff."
However, Carey’s story had a major flaw. The disease he claimed to have, multiple myeloma, is incurable. If his story were true, it would have had an inevitable fatal ending.
"The prognosis and treatment for multiple myeloma has improved through the years," Prof Kamal Fadalla, Consultant Haematologist at St Vincents Private Hospital, told Prime Time.
"We think the average survival for a patient with multiple myeloma is between eight to 12 years," he said, "but unfortunately there is no cure for myeloma."
The healer
One way for the former Kilkenny hurling star to have a terminal illness and stay alive was to find a miracle cure.
On 14 October 2019 he sought help from Séamus Byrne, who runs St Gemma’s Healing Ministry in Kilkenny. Mr Byrne, and those who come to him, believe in the healing power of prayer.
"When people come with the various different things - could be cancer, heart problems, MS, whatever, depression, all sorts of difficulties…you work with them, you pray with them, and you do the very best you can to help them out."
Séamus Byrne’s work is based on mutual trust, so when Carey came to seek help with his alleged cancer, he took him at face value.
"Well, if they don't come with an honest heart, they're just deceiving themselves."
Carey did deceive Mr Byrne, however.
Mr Byrne said he would not breach confidentiality about the details of his interaction with Carey. However, he described, in general terms, what took place.
"Somebody rang me to know would I pray with him, that he had this cancer problem," Mr Byrne said.
"I said, 'okay’, as I would've done with many others. They wanted to me to talk to him privately in a private room…I could understand that because of his public image at the time. I brought him to a private room, dealt with him, prayed with him," Mr Byrne said.
Nine days after those prayers with Mr Byrne, Carey was pretending to others that he was in Seattle for treatment (the court heard on Friday that he hadn’t actually travelled to the United States for any reason since 2015.)
Carey texted a friend on 23 October 2019 with details of alleged tumour removal, pain killers and being fed through tubes. He also added that there was "no tv at all in my section. They read me the Irish Independent every day so that takes about an hour or so".
But he reported progress. Tests showed that his tumours were now "all benign," he claimed, "so this is the first big breakthrough for me in 8 yrs".
The following month, on 17 November, he texted the same friend. "I have some good news...I have gotten the full all clear on everything and a full clean bill of health...I’m [in] a bit of shock still...But I’m finally free."
He then went on to describe the medical treatments that he alleged he had, which amounted to "23 transplants and 347 tumours removed". Carey told people that praying with Séamus Byrne had cured him.
The cure
He "supposedly had a great healing," Mr Byrne told Prime Time, but it "now turns out that he didn't even have cancer".
"It's sad that anybody would abuse or use anybody's ministry like that," he said.
My Byrne said he didn't realise that somebody could "stoop to that level", adding that it was "very disappointing because I really always thought very highly of the man".
In gratitude for the alleged healing, Carey told Mr Byrne he would buy him a car and a €1,000 deposit was paid to a local garage. Carey never came through with the balance to finalise the purchase of the car, however.
Soon after his fictitious cure, Carey was again scamming people. In the cases of at least 11 of the 13 people he pleaded guilty to defrauding, the crime began after the fake cure.
Even to friends, Carey peddled the story that because his cancer had returned so did his need for treatment. In October 2021, he texted one friend: "I’m going to have another blood transfusion and hormone injection."
"Having it done now. It’s instructions from Seattle."
A month later, another text: "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."
In September 2022, he was texting the same friend about other imaginary treatments. "Had tumours removed Thursday..."
The medical letters
All the forged medical letters that underpinned Carey’s story were written on headed notepaper from two highly regarded medical facilities: The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester, known as the Christie, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, known as the Fred Hutch.
All were addressed to Carey at residences in Dublin, Kildare and Manchester.
In one letter, which purports to be from the Fred Hutch, treatment for the blood cancer that Carey claimed he had was outlined.
"We will obtain cells from your lower body and harvest these cells for the duration of your treatment," the letter said.
Another described a week of procedures beginning on Monday, 25 November, 2013 with "4-hour duration of administering Lenalidomide through a catheter in the jugular vein" and ending on Saturday with "Isolation".
The letter ends with "I am glad your last treatment has been successful and I will maintain this method every 2 months as advised".
Almost all the letters mix complicated medical terminology, including references to measurements for proteins like haptoglobin and gamma globulin, with conversational language.
We showed portions of the letters to medical experts, including Dr Patrick Hayden, a consultant haematologist and clinical lead for the Myeloma Service at St. James’s Hospital in Dublin.
"I don't think they read like medical letters at all. The language is overly casual or conversational," he told Prime Time.
"There are phrases that are used that would not be medical phrases. There's a reference to ‘rogue tumours,’ which is not a word that we would use. There's talk about self-healing… unusual phrasing for a medical letter."
Three of the supposed letters from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center are dated from 2013, but they were obviously written much later because the headed notepaper was not used by that clinic until 2015.
One letter stated: "I can now advise with 100% certainty that you no longer suffer from Multiple Myeloma (MM). This in itself is a miracle."
Prof Kamal Fadalla, Consultant Haematologist at St Vincent's Private Hospital in Dublin, told Prime Time "that doesn't make sense".
"There is no such thing. It's not the way that we communicate to the patient. We tell the patient from the first consultation that multiple myeloma is very treatable condition" but it is incurable," he said.
Two other letters supposedly written on the same day by different doctors – one in the United States and the other in England - ended with identical language.
"In conclusion, I wish you every success in the future and would like with your permission to use your files as a case study."
This was yet another layer to DJ Carey’s story – that he was taking part in clinical trials for a new cancer treatment.
In October 2022, he texted a friend saying: "I was in the cold [sic] face of those trials."
A week later he wrote to the same friend. "I’m sure lots of people will benefit from trials that I have done."
Prime Time has also obtained three A4 pages of handwritten notes - apparently in DJ Carey’s handwriting - listing medical terms relating to the disease that he claimed to have and explanations of test results.
They are similar to the type of notes that a student cramming for an exam might prepare, precisely the type of information that might help anyone trying to appear knowledgeable about multiple myeloma.
The handwritten notes also include draft sentences similar to those that appear in the typed fake medical letters.
The medical letters were one part of subtly reinforcing DJ’s story that he had cancer.
In a 2015 radio interview by Ray D’Arcy on RTÉ, Carey spoke in vague terms about ongoing health worries.
"I know there's health things that you don't really want to talk about, but how are you?" Mr D’Arcy asked.
"I'm doing okay, you know… I have to travel to the States a bit for treatment…I still have to travel for the guts of a year," Carey replied.
These suggestive references on national radio reinforced a story he was telling people privately, that he was getting cancer treatment abroad and he needed their help.
"It's exploitative," said Dr Hayden. "People want to help.... if they think there's a possibility that the donation might get the person access to better treatment or even a cure, well, invariably they will give money."
Dr Hayden told Prime Time that there is no need to go abroad for treatment that "myeloma is something that the HSE has invested heavily in".
For some who did question why he had to travel abroad, Carey responded that he couldn’t get treatment in Ireland because he had taken a medical negligence lawsuit against - depending on who he was talking to - either the HSE or St James Hospital.
Publican Noel Tynan who gave Carey €10,000 for medical treatment, was one who asked.
"I said, ‘why do you go to Seattle, Washington’ can you not get it in Ireland or England?"
According to Tynan, Carey said: "There are only two hospitals in the world that do it, St James' Hospital and Seattle and St James’s flooded my lungs 18 months ago and there's a lawsuit going on." He then said he’d "been awarded €1.8 million".
Just like his cancer, medical letters and miracle cure; the lawsuit, the legal award and the lung-flooding yarn were entirely a product of Carey’s imagination.
A special Prime Time programme about DJ Carey from reporter Paul Murphy and producer/director Sallyanne Godson will broadcast on 4 November at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player.
