iPhone cables, handball and fake cancer: DJ Carey’s extraordinary lies catch up with him

DJ Carey went to extraordinary lengths in his campaign to dupe friends and family into handing over hundreds of thousands of euros.

He managed to cheat his way to almost 400,000 euros with claims about his health – mainly a battle with cancer – which involved him stuffing a phone charger cable up his nose to look like a medical cord and get people to give him money for treatment.

The former hurler for Kilkenny faked medical records and told his victims that he was in line for a one million euro payout from the HSE which he would use to pay them all back.

When police initially caught up with him and questioned him about his cancer claims, he said he concocted the story first in 2014 when in reality he was suffering from a heart condition.

Images of him posted pretending to be in a hospital bed with the iPhone cable masquerading as a lifeline were met with derision and completed the fall from grace for the former GAA legend.

Businessman and friend Denis O’Brien loaned him more than 125,000 euros he claimed he needed for cancer treatment and to pay loans.

He told the court he had been ‘duped’ by Carey who also bought him a car and provided free accommodation for him in Dublin.

He said it had been ‘unconscionable’ to lie about a cancer diagnosis to fleece friends for cash. At one stage Mr O’Brien asked for evidence of the medical treatment and was provided with letters claiming to be from the Fred Hutch medical center in Seattle. The center later denied any contact with Carey.

In one bizarre claim. Carey told Mr O’Brien he had won a handball tournament making him an elite athlete in the US and the government would now help with his medical bills.

Carey also pocketed 16,360 euros from Thomas Butler, a friend from golf and GAA in 2014 after telling him he required it to pay for cancer treatment.

Mr Butler used money from a pension lump sum to help DJ Carey in what was presented to him as a life and death situation.

Mr Butler said in a victim impact statement that Carey’s deceit had been ‘gut-wrenching’ particularly as his own parents had died from cancer.

He added: ‘I was also a volunteer driver for the Irish Cancer Society and there he was obtaining money by lying that he needed finance to obtain life-saving cancer treatment.

‘As I am regarded as a very generous individual DJ took advantage of this by his lies but as a qualified ACCA accountant who has worked with figures and finance all my working life, it made me look like a very stupid or a very naive individual.

‘I have five children and never had spare money to give them growing up. As I had received a pension lump sum at the time I was in a position to give DJ the 16,360 euros he stated he required for the medical procedure.

‘This could not have been nice for my children to observe who had never received a gift of substantial money from their father.’

Carey’s School friend Thomas Brennan, who was involved in the development of an oncology drug transferred two payments of 40,000 and 80,000 euros as he fell under the fraudster’s spell.

Carey stood expressionless in the courtroom with his hands clasped in front of him, wearing the same clothes as he was on Friday when he was taken into custody.

Carey was one of the most acclaimed figures in GAA history, having won five All-Ireland titles and nine All-Star awards.

Carey was sentenced to five and a half years in prison after

The ex-Kilkenny hurler was sentenced to five and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to 10 counts of inducing people to give him money after fraudulently claiming to have cancer.

A further eight counts were taken into consideration for sentencing at the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin on Monday.

Judge Martin Nolan said that fraudsters tend to appeal to the weakness of humans, which is usually greed.

‘This is not the case here, Mr Carey exploited the good nature of people,’ the judge said.

Describing Carey as a ‘formidable sportsman in both hurling and handball, one of the best known hurlers ever and known across the hurling world’, the judge said the people who gave him money were ‘good-natured people who wanted to help a person in need.’

He said that it was ‘very hard to know what motivated Mr Carey’ but since entering his guilty pleas, he had been subjected to ‘public odium and ridicule’ and that his ‘good name will probably never recover’.