A man stuck an iPhone cable up his nose, made a small fortune overnight, and has now been jailed in Ireland. “His reputation will probably never be recovered”
An Irish sports star was sentenced to five and a half years in prison yesterday after she pretended to have cancer in order to cheat her friends and family and get £345,000, which is almost 2 million lei, the Daily Mail writes.
DJ Carey, 54, nicknamed the “Maradona of hurling”, pleaded guilty in July to 10 counts of soliciting people to give him money.
One image, said to have been sent to his victims, appeared to show him with medical 'tubes' in his nose, but on closer inspection turned out to be an iPhone cable.
According to Wikipedia, hurling is an outdoor team game of ancient Irish Gaelic origin played by both men and women. As one of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the pitch and goals, the number of players and much of the terminology.
The object of the game is for players to use an ash wood stick called a hurl or hurley to hit a small ball called a sliotar between the opponent's goal posts, either over the crossbar for one point or under the crossbar into a net guarded by a goalkeeper for three points.
He exploited the goodness of people
Sentencing him, Judge Martin Nolan said fraudsters tend to exploit human weaknesses, which are usually greed.
“That is not the case here, Mr Carey exploited the kindness of people,” the judge said.
Describing Carey as “a formidable sportsman in both hurling and handball, one of the most famous hurlers of all time and world-renowned in the sport”, the judge said the people who gave him money were “benevolent people who wanted to help a person in need”.
He said it was “very difficult to know what motivated Mr Carey” but that since pleading guilty he had been subjected to “hate and public ridicule” and that his “reputation will probably never recover”.
He said that when he is released, he will probably face a hard life.
