January 29th, 2013. Sleet was falling down that night in Ballinamore, Ireland. Catherine Vallely and her friend were driving through the slush, when they saw something strange in the headlights. It was a man standing in the middle of the road. He was soaking wet with a scruffy grey beard, his thin body draped in tattered clothes and a plastic sheet.
Taking pity on him, the two women stopped and offered him a lift. Once inside, the stranger told them that for the past eight months he’d been kidnapped, starved, and held in an underground bunker.
That man was Kevin McGeever, and his story is like nothing you’ve ever known.Understandably shocked by what the man had said, Vallely took him to the nearest garda station the Irish equivalent of the police. Once inside, the man who was apparently 68 years old was questioned, but remained surprisingly calm throughout.
He gulped down tea and biscuits with gusto, and even ordered some curried fries from the nearby takeout. But it was clear something was very wrong. The man looked incredibly gaunt, and across his forehead, the word ‘tief’ a misspelling of thief was scrawled in ink. So, what had happened?According to the man, who said his name was Kevin McGeever, on May 27th, 2012, his house had been broken into and he’d been held at gunpoint by three masked men. Forced to comply, he was taken from his home in Gort, County Galway and imprisoned somewhere in a metal container underground.
There he was given nothing but water and one ham sandwich a day for months. Staring into his large, sunken eyes, the garda had no reason to doubt that poor man’s story. It even corroborated with a missing person report McGeever’s fiancée, Siobhan O’Callaghan, had filed back in June 2012. So, how did he escape?Well, apparently his captors had just grabbed him one day, handed him a cell phone, and dumped him on the side of the road with no explanation. When taken to Mullingar General Hospital, most things seemed to corroborate his story, he only weighed 112lbs and had some minor injuries to suggest he’d been manhandled. But one thing didn’t add up. McGeever had no eye damage strange considering he’d been trapped in a dark bunker for the past 8 months.
Then, days later, Vallely came across a photograph that shocked her. It showed a 196lb McGeever standing with his own private helicopter branded with his real estate company, KMM International. It turned out that McGeever was a multi-millionaire who lived in a mansion and owned a fleet of 13 luxury cars.Before we go any further, you need to know one thing about Kevin McGeever. He’s a massive con man. That fleet of cars and helicopter? They were all leased, with the latter photoshopped to bear his company name. By posing in that carefully curated photo, McGeever gave himself legitimacy even though he actually made his money by lying and cheating.So, when Vallely saw the image, she found it weird, sure, but didn’t immediately think it was fake. Which was exactly what McGeever was going for. The problem was, the wily conman had never got that much attention before. The kidnapping was all over the news. The Daily Mail suggested Russian mobsters were behind it, while The Guardian wondered whether it might’ve been the Provisional IRA, who were known for holding rich folk hostage in the 70s and 80s to raise funds.
Despite the Garda spending six months investigating however, none of those theories went anywhere. On top of that, cracks in McGeever’s story kept appearing. One eyewitness reported seeing the man outside O’Callaghan’s home more than a week after the date the kidnapping was supposed to have happened. And after examining McGeever’s phone, the garda traced texts sent to O’Callaghan from Germany and the UK during his supposed captivity. But that was far from the strangest thing they found out.
As a professional swindler, McGeever owed millions to people all over the world that he’d scammed. One of those people was pub owner and multimillionaire Kevin Cooke, who came forward with a bizarre tale. During McGeever’s supposed imprisonment, Cooke received a mysterious phone call instructing him to come to the town of Trim in County Meath to meet with McGeever.Hoping to finally receive his money, Cooke made the trip. When he arrived however, two men in a van approached, ordered him to get in, and placed a hood over his head. He was driven to an unknown location and, upon arrival, directed towards a dimly lit room. Inside, Cooke found none other than McGeever, sat in a chair, looking terrible. He told him he’d been kidnapped and that those responsible wanted $10M for his release.Shaken, Cooke barely had time to respond before the hood was placed back over his head, and he was returned to Trim. The garda arrested Cooke on suspicion of being involved in a scam and it was around that time that McGeever showed up on the road. After interviewing Cooke however, the garda concluded he was innocent and McGeever might’ve been in league with his supposed kidnappers after all.
Cooke was released, and on March 14th 2013, McGeever was arrested at his home in Craughwell for filing false reports and wasting garda time. But why had he staged the kidnapping in the first place? Why did he pull Cooke into it? Who even is Kevin McGeever and how did he find himself in that mess? To find out, we’re going to have to go back to the beginning!
The story of McGeever’s meteoric rise and fall starts back in September 1944 in Swinford, County Mayo, where he was born. His father worked as a master builder, which McGeever credits for his entry into the property industry. Even back then, his behavior was a sign of things to come.Once, he and his father had stopped off at a pub and the landlord had told them about a plot of land outside of town. Sensing an opportunity, McGeever quickly struck up a deal and forked over a £50 deposit. Then, he built a house on the plot and sold it before ever paying for the land.
McGeever’s pursuit of wealth only accelerated as he grew older, and he developed a weaselly habit of disappearing and reinventing himself to evade being caught out. In 1973, at age 29, he whiled away his days with family and friends and was in the middle of working on a housing development when he suddenly drove to Dublin Airport and boarded a plane, abandoning everything.Why? We can’t be sure, but it’s likely one of his deceits had been discovered. What happened after is unclear until the 1980s, when he resurfaced on the other side of the world, in Australia. By then, he was married to a woman called Valmai, had two daughters with her, and lived in a four-bedroom waterfront house in Kareela. Life seemed to be going well until 1985, when McGeever once again lived up to the Irish goodbye.He left his car at Sydney Airport and got on a plane, leaving behind his family, as well as 5 angry investors all of whom he’d tricked into buying the same roofing business. McGeever has dismissed that version of events, saying that he took a “trip overseas” that happened to last the rest of his life, and maintains that he has a good relationship with his family.
One of the main reasons he was able to get away with so much for so long is because McGeever is charismatic, likeable, and crucially narcissistic. By the late 1990s, he was living in Georgia, USA, where he married his second wife Jeany Nicole Chhay. It was in the Land of Opportunity where he embarked on a new venture: creating his own bank. Nothing untoward about that, right?The new company was called the World Trust Bank and was based in Liechtenstein. Using his trademark charm and charisma, McGeever persuaded 88 businesspeople from around the world to invest in that new prospect. The only thing was, there was no World Trust Bank. He’d set up the fake company to be registered in the British Virgin Islands with the help of a bogus lawyer called James Sexton.
Nonetheless, trusting investors poured a whopping $8.8 million into the bank account, lured by McGeever's promise of up to 25% monthly interest on their deposits. Eventually, some investors got wise to the ploy and froze their accounts, but by then over $2 million had vanished into McGeever and Sexton’s pockets.Those dubious dealings caught the attention of the FBI, who discovered that McGeever had bought himself a $67,000 Mercedes with the money and an $18,000 church organ?! The remaining funds were traced to accounts in Belize and Panama, both of which had been set up by Sexton. The phony lawyer was imprisoned and eventually passed away in custody which may have worked in McGeever’s favor, seeing as he couldn’t testify against him.But then another accomplice, Doug Johnson, agreed to provide evidence to the police. With his scheme spiralling out of control and facing an FBI warrant for his arrest, McGeever decided to cut his losses, abandoning his second wife and fleeing America. To this day, the warrant remains active. The man himself denied any wrongdoing, and even had the cajons to claim they’re after the wrong Kevin McGeever!
As for his wife Chhay, she filed for divorce 10 years later since McGeever couldn’t be traced which seems like 10 years too late to me. I wonder if he organized his own kidnapping just to escape his ever growing list of ex-wives.The next time McGeever crops up is 2001 or 2002, when he moved to Dubai and was given another chance to re-invent himself. It was in those years he met his latest partner Siobhan O'Callaghan while on a trip to Dublin. Of course, the trip wasn’t just for fun at the time, Ireland was going through a period of rapid economic growth. Capitalizing on that boom, McGeever set up an Irish roadshow offering people their dream homes in Dubai for a 10% deposit.
It was a roaring success 100 people all signed up to the plan. And that's where came, Kevin Cooke. He handed over $880,000 for 7 apartments, what a steal! To reassure him, McGeever made regular calls to his home in Kildare and kept him updated with construction shots the same as he did with all his investors. Little did they know, the construction shots were faked, and that was just another of McGeever’s ruses.Suspicions arose among investors during a Christmas party at the Hilmar Hotel in County Westmeath, in December 2007, where they discovered they’d all been told the same stories. The next month, one of them visited Dubai by himself and confirmed their suspicions, returning to warn the other investors. But by that point McGeever was nowhere to be found. But that's not to say McGeever had stopped his dodgy dealings.Businessman Jim Byrne was next to fall victim, leaping at the chance of buying five brand new properties for an unbelievable price. But in 2008, the Dubai property market began to crash, and Byrne became anxious. After tracking McGeever down, the con man assured him everything was alright and even flew some investors out to Dubai to view their properties. Little did they know, he was showing all of them the same handful of buildings. McGeever even sold the same commercial floor to buyers from Ireland, Russia, and China 48 times!
His con earnt him some $77 million, which he used to purchase a property in Dubai for, himself. Meanwhile investors like Byrne and Cooke never received their properties and if they thought McGeever had a refund policy, they had another thing coming. Altogether individuals faced losses from $22,000 to $2.7m. Of course, McGeever placed the blame squarely on the investors, accusing them of failing to meet their investment repayment obligations and being “a nightmare” to work with.But it wasn’t all plain sailing for the grifter. Come January 2011, and McGeever’s personal assistant, Shirley Anthony, was quickly losing patience. It had been two months since she’d started working for him, and she still hadn't got her salary. And when McGeever finally coughed up a check, it bounced after she tried to cash it. That was the last straw for Anthony.She reported him to the Dubai authorities, who arrested him and told him he wouldn’t be released until he’d paid up. A financier in Ireland who’d been swindled by McGeever heard about that, and flew to Dubai to hand the authorities all the bad cheques McGeever had given him too. After spending a month in jail, McGeever begrudgingly sold one of his Dubai properties to repay Anthony and the financier and was freed.
That year, Byrne also tried to catch the trickster this time, for good. He flew to Dubai, hoping to recover his stolen money, and presented authorities with evidence of McGeever’s fraudulent scheme. Interpol subsequently issued a global arrest warrant for the con man but unfortunately, it was too late. McGeever had already fled the emirate back to Ireland shortly after leaving jail.Meanwhile, the man himself was busy using $4.8 million of his grifting money to fix up his mansion back in Craughwell. From there, he came up with a brand-new persona as an aviation executive. In October 2011, he took a group of investors to Lahrs Airport in Germany, clearly forgetting there was a global warrant out for his arrest.
Upon arriving, he was taken into custody and spent 48 days behind bars. Yet, somehow, that still wasn’t the end! Irritatingly, Dubai authorities were too slow in sending their documents over and the case was dropped before he could be extradited to the UAE. Once again, the con man scurried back to Ireland.
Escaping any serious charges, McGeever carried on living in his mansion with his partner, Siobhan O’Callaghan. But his multiple scrapes with the law hadn’t put him off his game. He set up an office and from there began selling luxury properties in the Gulf, sometimes making lucrative property deals from Mullingar Park Hotel, where his American twang earnt him the nickname “The Yank” among locals.However, McGeever’s problems were far from over. Despite his latest scheme, he was drowning in debt, owed millions, and was regularly hounded by all the people he’d defrauded. That was nothing new for McGeever, The Daily Mail claimed that back in 2009 two thugs had broken into his apartment and dangled him by his ankles over a balcony until he wrote them out a cheque.
In his late sixties, however, the elderly con artist wasn’t in any position to be dangled over a balcony. Indeed, he probably felt like he was "running out of places to go," according to journalist Brian Carroll, who’s chronicled McGeever's life. Perhaps the very worst thing, though, was that around that time, O’Callaghan was sadly diagnosed with cancer. For someone who’d been running from responsibility and consequences his entire life, all of that must’ve been terrifying for McGeever.And it’s there that we round right on back to his infamous “kidnapping”. It was May 2013, and McGeever was getting old, tired, sick of being pestered by his victims, and worried about his ailing wife. So, what did he do? What he does best of course, disappear. Only, just vanishing for a while wasn’t gonna cut it this time.
So, he made up a whole longwinded story about his mansion being broken into and armed gunmen kidnapping him. Then, partway through his eight-month disappearance, he hired people to pretend they’d taken him hostage and drive Kevin Cooke, one of his victims, to see him. Why?Two reasons. One, McGeever wanted to have a credible witness that would confirm his kidnapping story was legit. Two, he wanted Cooke to believe he didn’t have enough money to free himself, let alone pay him or any of the other investors back. Or at least, that’s the theory the garda landed upon after interrogating Cooke. With that in mind, they arrested McGeever on March 28th, 2013.
At first, the man wholeheartedly denied everything. In interviews, McGeever would roar with anger about the trauma he’d experienced, apparently outraged that anyone would disregard his ordeal. Remember the word ‘thief’ was written misspelt on his forehead? Well, he claimed that was evidence of his truth. It was written in indelible ink and remained there for months after McGeever was found.To cover it up, the aged conman had to apply layers upon layers of makeup. Eventually, he removed it, but only after 20 appointments with laser specialists to burn the word off. You must admit, it does seem odd that someone who was well known for lathering themselves in fake tan, hair dye, and expensive clothes, would go to such lengths to make themselves look awful. And to leave your seriously ill wife behind? But despite promising to provide documents that would prove his story true, none of that supposed evidence has ever seen the light of day.One woman in Galway, who chose to remain anonymous, said that McGeever’s tricks are old hat. She told the Irish Post that in 2011, McGeever owed her over $110,000 and had repeatedly failed to attend meetings about paying her back. Then, in a chance meeting in 2012, he told her a cock and bull story about how he’d been wait for it, kidnapped in Nigeria the previous December. When she reminded him that he’d texted her ‘Happy New Year’ during his apparent imprisonment, he just laughed it off. He wouldn’t be laughing it off just a few years later though.
It’s safe to say, by April 2016 the walls had very much closed in on the conman. In that month, a then 71 year old McGeever was escorted to Galway Circuit Criminal Court. Before everyone, he finally admitted to fabricating the kidnapping story and pleaded guilty to all charges. It was everybody else’s turn to be outraged.His lies about the kidnapping had prompted a huge six-week investigation that wasted 3,000 hours of garda time and cost €86,500 that’s over $90,000! The court learnt about the millions he owed following the Dubai debacle and how he invented the story of his imprisonment to get his creditors off his back. It was exactly as the garda had suspected.If you’re wondering how McGeever thought his plan would ever work, it was likely a mixture of desperation and overconfident narcissism. He’d gotten away with it countless times before, why not again? His own defense counsel summed it up best. They described his actions as ‘incredibly stupid’ and read out an apology on McGeever’s behalf.But the really wild thing is, after pleading guilty, he was interviewed by The Irish Independent. Incredibly, he once again recounted the story of how he’d been kidnapped and starved, despite having just admitted in court that the whole thing was a lie!As for what McGeever was really doing during that eight-month period? It’s impossible to say with any certainty, but he definitely wasn’t being there for his wife. She lost her battle with cancer in November 2013, just a few months after McGeever’s return.
The swindler later claimed he’d stayed in a remote cottage by himself and paid people to deliver food, though who he paid have never been identified. Not to say that didn’t happen he had to have stayed somewhere while he was pulling his stunt on Cooke. But if you remember, his phone was traced to Germany, so he must have gone abroad at some point too. Regardless of how he did it though, ultimately, it didn’t work.After some deliberation, McGeever was handed a suspended two-year sentence. The judge said the lenient sentence was down to McGeever’s age and the substantial costs already incurred by the taxpayer. He argued imprisoning him would only add to that expense which is a funny way for a judge to view the justice system if you ask me.
But it wasn’t quite over for the elderly fraudster. Following the trial, Byrne took his personal case against McGeever to Irish court. McGeever tried to pull yet another fast one and negotiate directly with his victim, promising that the debt could be settled by tapping into his business ventures in Hong Kong and Singapore.Safe to say, Byrne didn’t fall for it this time and the court ordered McGeever to pay him around $1.2 million. On top of that, another high court ruling demanded McGeever pay all his other victims back but with a list like McGeever’s where do you start? As of 2017, true to form, he’d failed to pay anyone, earning himself the fitting nickname ‘The Deceiver’ McGeever.As for what he's up to now, it's anyone's guess. Maybe he's pulling another fast one on some unsuspecting soul, but I suspect he's just keeping his head low. We’ll have to wait and see. One thing we do know is that there’s no one quite like Kevin McGeever.
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Colton Harris-Moore and
Frank Abagnale! Thanks for reading.
