All language subtitles for Swindlers.2026.S01E03.A.House.of.Cards.1080p.RTE.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-DoRN_track3_[eng]

On a June morning in 2010,
in a fine Georgian mansion over

Merrion Square, the management

of Custom House Capital made their
way to the first floor boardroom.

They were gathering for the last
installment of a team

building exercise.

The management team was led
by CHC's directors, Harry Cassidy,

the Chief Executive,
John White,

the Investment Director,
and John Mulholland,

who had set up the firm
with Cassidy a decade previously.

Cassidy presented the analogy
of a castle on a hill,

a vision of what CHC would become.

It was a cham. Cassidy's Castle
on the Hill

was more like pie in the sky.

The Office of
the Financial Regulator,

on which CHC depended
for its licence to operate,

wanted to get rid of Cassidy.

It feared for the safety of funds
that clients had entrusted to CHC.

The stuff going
on in the background,

Custom House Capital's dark secret
was that it was stealing

from its client's accounts.

(INTRIGUING MUSIC PLAYS)

REPORTER: Some of those
who lost money in the collapse

of Custom House Capital
in 2011 came to court for

today's sentencing.

Judge Orla Crowe said she had
read more than 200 victim impact

statements from former clients.

Most were hardworking people
who had carefully put aside

money for their retirement.

How did the central bank go
into that company in 2009?

And those people were able
to continue to do what they did.

I don't think our investment
went bad because it was

a bad investment. I think
our investment went bad

because bad people took our
money and did bad things with it.

It's kind shocking, really,
when you think about it.

I'd feel better if I'd been
scammed by a fella on the

end of the phone.

The prosecution received victim
impact statements

from 197 people. Many of those
who lost life savings

they thought they had invested

for their retirement came to
court for the sentence hearing.

What we had worked hard for all
those decades was squandered

by a handful of people.

Some of their husbands
committed suicide.

Some people just gave up.

I knew the life she'd lived
and how hard she'd worked

and her health condition.

And to say to her,
Helga, all your money is gone

just down a black hole by a guy
that you trusted with your life.

The first email
I got off the guards,

it was addressed to
dear victim, and that hit me.

Being called a victim.

When you think about the scale
of what was before us

at the investigation stage,
where there's potentially

2,700 investors, tens of millions
of euros misappropriated.

The Book of Evidence alone
ran into seven and a half

thousand pages.

It was an absolute
huge investigation.

REPORTER: The new Dundrum town
centre stands on an 18 acre site.

The first phase has taken
almost five years to complete,

and local people queued from
early morning to get their

first look inside.

I just want to see the shop,
see all the nice things

that's in the shop.

At 10 o'clock, the waiting ended.

I never thought I could live
to either see the luas

or to see this centre.
It's absolutely marvelous.

I had set up a business in 1995.

So by the time
2005 and 2006 came along.

The country was singing.

The company was doing well,
and I was in a position to decide

what I wanted to do
with that money.

Was I going to go mad
and buy an Aston Martin,

or would I be sensible and put
it into a pension fund?

So a pension fund
is what I ended up doing.

The arrival of American
multinationals had

begun in a big way,
and then things were moving

forward, and they
were moving forward most

clearly in the property area.

What was going on in Ireland
at the stage was you buying

something today and you were
selling it a month later,

30 % more than you bought
it for, and all this carry on.

This morphed into a
classic financial bubble,

where I haven't taken part
in the bubble,

but my neighbour next door is now
driving a spanking big new car,

and they're away
on holidays half the time.

And my wife is looking at me
saying, what's wrong with us?

It's because
we're not in property.

Well, I had a pension adviser.

Most of the property opportunities
in Dublin, certainly,

a lot of them were taken up.

So he had said to me,
there's this company has set up

called Custom House Capital,
and they were looking at investing

in property outside of Ireland.

TAPE: Established in 1997,
Custom House Capital is one

of Ireland's most dynamic wealth
management companies,

and currently manages over
1 billion euros on behalf

of clients.

Their sales pitch was aggressive
returns and growth.

That was the pitch.

So they went for that quite
strongly, and it worked,

and people were attracted by it.

My aunt was born in a city
called Kiel in northern Germany.

It's on the Baltic.
She was born in 1928.

The war broke out when
she was 11 years old.

She lost her mother at 12 years
of age in the back of a truck,

bombed out city.

Her father was quite elderly,
so she became a carer for him.

My uncle, and he met this at that
stage, 17-year-old beautiful girl.

Her father accepted my uncle
because he was Irish

rather than English.

They married some years later
and they rebuilt a little shop.

And she worked in that shop for
50 years, six in in the morning

'till six in the evening.

She loved Ireland,
particularly Connemara.

So they sold their business,
brought their money to Dublin,

put in the Guinness Mahan Bank,
which was the place if you

had a lump sum at the time.

She met Harry Cassidy there.

He was obviously
dealt with her money.

So he came from a business
culture that would have been...

probably, c avalier is probably
the best term I could use

to describe it. He came from
Guinness & Mahon,

which
was Des Traynor,

who was
Charles Haughey's accountant,

and I think, Ansbacher Accounts
and offshore money.

REPORTER: The afternoon,
Sandra Kells of Guinness &

Mahon Bank was explaining
how they became imbriled

with the Pruner brothers,
Fernando and Andreas,

who ran an organised crime
ring in Miami, Florida.

There was that business culture
at the time that he'd

sprung up out of as well.

He came in strong in the '70s and
'80s. He was an ambitious guy.

He was known as a business
development guy,

not a technocrat, and that stood
to him in those times.

The business was founded
by my grandfather in 1949.

It was a drinks wholesale
business, serving pubs and clubs

and hotels in County Kildare.

Both my dad and his brother

and my grandfather ran
the business successfully

for a long number of years.

They had an accountant and Roy
advised them to start planning for

post-retirement or for the future.

Introduced them to Jamal Holland
and Harry Cassidy.

Harry was in Guinness and
Mahon at the time, the bank,

and some investments
were made, obviously,

and they grew quite well.

I was with the
Investment Bank of Ireland.

My husband also worked in
the same institution, which,

to quote the promo at the time,
was the merchant banking arm

of the Bank of Ireland Group.

So that was the start
of the relationship with Harry.

He was with the
Investment Department for quite

a few years,
and then he left

and he went to
Guinness & Mahon.

To best my knowledge, he
didn't have a college education.

He did the Institute of Taxation
exams and excelled at them

as far as I'm aware.

But yeah, so he would have been
straight out of school

and into the bank.

He did have a great way
with clients,

very good way with clients,
and clients trusted them.

I had transferred funds that
I had come into as a result

of the death of my husband.

I transferred those to Guinness,
Mahon under Harry's guidance,

if you like.

And you trusted him?
Oh, implicitly.

Implicitly

Like a lot of
Irish people at the time,

it was based on relationships.

It was based on trust. It was
based on a point of contact.

I suppose maybe 20 or 30
or 40 years before that,

if you were a small town
business person in Ireland,

if the bank manager
came to you and said,

you should invest
in this product,

that's what you did because
you trusted a bank manager.

1980s, 1990s, there
was a lot of big institutions

that would have an investment
in pension management.

The economy was becoming buoyant
and probably thought,

Why am I working here?

Or why am I giving two-thirds
of this away when, theoretically,

I could set up my own shop,
keep it for myself,

and build out a business
that's going to be worth

something down the line?

Harry was great fun, very good
sense of humour, short fuse.

When he exploded, he exploded.

He had a bit of the
small man syndrome.

What he didn't have in stature,
he made up for in taxation

expertise, running into
investment expertise,

and arrogance.

TAPE: Hi,
Harry Cassidy

from Custom House Capital Limited
with another thought for the day.

Did you know that Donald Trump
is worth around $2. 6 billion,

and that if you laid his money

in dollar bills end-to-end,
it would stretch all the way

to the moon with a bit to spare.

So what does this have to do with
Custom House Capital Limited?

Well, chances are you feel
your pension fund

wouldn't even stretch into
the middle of next week,

which is why it would be a rather
good idea to call us today.

Custom House Capital Limited is
regulated by the financial

regulator under Section 10
of the Investment

Intermediaries Act, 1995.

Because I'd obviously dealt with
him in Guinness Mahon,

they thought Harry is the man.

So they sent their money forward
to Dublin with the intention

of buying a house here
or building a house.

So she trusted him implicitly.

They had strong brands
and relationships coming

from Guinness and Mahon
and a few other institutions.

So they came together as
John Mulholland,

who was a non-executive director
and a chairman,

Harry Cassie as the CEO,

and a few people
they brought with them

on an executive
level as well.

So for the first few years,
they were successful,

but it was hard not to be
successful if you were a stable

enough business during
that period of time

because there was a lot
of money and cash

coming into the economy.

The Custom House Capital
Investigation

was certainly one of the most
complex investigations ever

undertaken by the Garda
National Economic Crime Bureau.

I think ultimately,
100 people came forward

and actually made statements.

And then you have to involve
every aspect of their investment

with that particular firm.

How it was handled,
how it was organised,

and the messaging
they received from Customs House

Capital and staff.

A lot of victims
didn't come forward.

But in fraud investigations
in particular, it's not unusual

for victims to not come forward.

Victims sometimes feel ashamed.
They're embarrassed.

They don't want
their business known.

It took 12 years from the point
of when it officially stopped

for people to go to jail.
INTERVIEWER: Why was that?

Because it took
so long to unravel

the complexity of what they did.

There was so much data,
electronic data,

retrieved as part

of that investigation on servers
and on different computers,

and it requires a particular data
processing that was not

available to GNE/CB at that time.

And for that reason,
the case was put on hold pending

the receipt of that report.

It wasn't people of extreme wealth
from a lot of the people we spoke

to throughout the investigation.

They'd lost a very modest amount
of money that they thought they

could use for later in their life,
and it was the absolute stress

that people were
put under as a result of this.

We started contributing
to pension in the mid '90s.

By 2006, the business was
going really well here.

And of course, when
you're self-employed and you

have any relationship with any
insurance company of any kind,

they're always
knocking on the door.

One day they knocked on
the door and said,

you have some
cash in your pension.

Why don't you
buy a pension property?

Because Charlie McCreevy
has changed the rules.

You can put any asset you
want into your pension.

Why don't you do this?

I did get a pension off, in
computer type in Merrion Square.

Pat, the boss, he put me
onto the pension scheme.

He retired, so
he was shutting it down.

49,200.

When I set up my own business
back in the '80s,

it was fairly successful,
fairly quickly.

Then eventually, we had
been introduced to the idea

of selling up a personal pension,
and that would have

led me to Canada life.

Over a number of decades,
we had saved something

in the order of of 475,000.

And so Canada Life,
who were our pension provider

at the time, appointed a trustee
for this property that we were

buying, and the trustee
they were appointed were

Custom House Capital.

We never knew who they were.

We never heard of them before.

They start building relationships

within the intermediary
community,

the financial voice community,
accountancy community,

the Canada Lifes of the world,
and start bringing them to say,

Well, if you introduce
a client to this, we'll pay you

a commission, a fee,
whatever it's going to be,

and that'll be part
of the portfolio that

you'll have with them. But
they would still be the client

of the Canada Life
agent at the time,

and it would have been a
product they were investing.

So they wouldn't have been
a Custom House Capital client,

per se, but parallel to that,

Custom House Capital were
bringing their own clients

directly.

Joe came in and he told me that
he had an investment that he

thought I might be interested in.
He said, this one is really good.

I would recommend that you join.

He said, in fact, I'm in it
myself. You know what I mean?

He says, now, lots of my friends
have gotten involved in the SSIAs,

and I was too cautious
to get involved.

The broker, he assured us that
Custom House Capital

were the top people, and I was
brought down, introduced to them.

It was all very impressive stuff.

Met John Mulholland
in particular,

never met Harry Cassidy.

And that was it, really.
There was nothing more to it.

You just signed this and
we look after everything else.

AD: Custom House Capital Limited
is regulated by the financial

regulator under Section 10
of the Investment

Intermediaries Act, 1995.

Authorised, regulated,
central bank.

Why would you suspect
that there was anything

untoward here at all?

So CHC's basic fundraising model
for themselves as a corporate

entity was based primarily
on a 5% upfront commission

on any money
invested with them.

So if you invested 100,000, they
would take 5,000 as commission.

That's a pretty aggressive,
juicy commission.

But it allowed CHC then offer
very extravagant junkets

and incentives
to try to get money in.

And then on top of that,

they were getting
commission on the

monies invested
in the property.

WOMAN: They were good at bringing
clients on board.

They recognised this
within each other.

They both like to go off
and play golf together.

And John had a place down
in Mount Juliet.

It was the ultimate junket.

And it was part of the era
at the time, that you had

to look after your clients.

There was games of golf,
there was dinners,

there was nights out, there
was social gatherings between

John Mulholland and his wife,
and my mother and my father as

well, who obviously would listen
intently to the advice that John

would give and trusted him
implicitly on whatever he might

suggest they should do and
what products they should

invest into as such.

The Custom House Capital
Prime Property Fund

number 2 has
just been launched.

What benefits exactly does
that offer to investors?

As with the CHC Prime Property
Fund, one, it offers investors

diversification and the same
great range of benefits.

They love to have that image of,
look at us, we're successful.

Suave.

Loved himself,
loved the man about town image.

I remember my dad saying to me
that they had bought this premise

on Merrion Square,
this big Georgian double fronted

premise, high ceilings and
antique furniture, and that

where was all this
money obviously coming from.

Surely the fees weren't that good
to obviously create that level of

investment in a business premise.

The high upfront fee
couldn't have happened

without the expectation of very
high investment returns,

and they couldn't have
realistically been offered

at that time on anything other
than property assets,

which had had a very long
period of sustained buildups.

And in an environment where
asset values are rising

by between 15 and 20 %.

My instinct is less
to worry about the

size of the
5% commission than

to say, hurry up and get
the money committed.

Don't leave me out of the race.

I think it would be safe to say
between pre-retirement

and post-retirement,
the value of the funds was

definitely over a million, at
one point 1.2, 1.5 million.

But it fuels the bubble,
and it reinforces the bubble,

and it reinforces the danger
of the bubble, because now we've

got a bunch of investors who have
used borrowings to get in here,

and if the asset value drops,
the risk that they

have negative equity inflicted
on them suddenly rises.

They started sending me updates
from CHC, which, strange enough,

made me feel more secure.

Over two years, the years 2006,
2007, I put in what was

a high five-figure sum.

Here we are in 2025,

and I have never seen
one cent of that money.

This is the first ever detailed
breakdown of the Irish mortgage

market, and it shows
a surprisingly strong

level of activity.

If you go to a party
on a Saturday night,

the party starts
at 10 o clock.

At one in the morning, you
could justifiably wander around

the party handing out alcohol
awareness leaflets,

but nobody's going to
thank you for it.

And if you're in
bubble lift-off mode,

people do not want
to hear the warnings.

Germany's decentralised
property market is booming.

Through our association
with Berendes & Partners,

we identified the potential
of the German commercial property

market over two years ago.

It was good marketing to say,
We're not going to put all of our

eggs into the
Irish property market basket.

We're going to spread
them across Europe.

Just one kilometre
from Hamburg City,

on Hyden Camps vague, our award-
high specification office.

Before completion, a large
number of renowned- Colorado.

What type of investors
are you looking for?

Are you looking
for individual investors?

And perhaps a range
of pension funds.

It's open to all types
of investments, private clients,

pension funds, approved
retirement funds

and even company money.

The theory was they
bought a building.

They used your funds as
payment for the building.

They took a mortgage
for the rest of it.

It was paid back over seven years.

And then technically,
after the seven years,

they sold the building.
And when our profit was made,

was distributed back through
the pensions then, pro-rata.

It was 10.

680,000 when it was transferred
as far as I'm aware.

Instead of sticking with
what they knew

and which they had
a good history with,

they decided, we can,
I don't know, conquer the world

or whatever they were thinking.
I don't know.

But like setting up the fund
to buy a shopping centre

in Munich.

The pair of them,
and there would have been a pair

of them in it,
whole apartment blocks in Spain,

wanted bigger and better.

Statements were issued.

They'd come in the post.

Once a year, my dad would
meet with John Mulholland.

It would be a semi-formal review.

Every couple of months,
we would get a statement for each

person who was in the pension.

Everything is fine.

Don't worry about it. Your
dad's investments are secure.

He had lots of high-profile
established business people

that were obviously
investing in CHC products.

So what's good for the goose
is good for the gander

in some respect.

REPORTER: The jaw-dropping slide
in Irish bank shares today is

unprecedented for
recent times.

It was Warren Buffett who said
that it's only when the tide goes

out that we get to see
who's been swimming naked.

And the global property rise,
that peaked 2007, 2008.

And because so many people had
borrowed money to take part

in this, financial leverage
worked against people

on the way down.

And that turned a lot of people
into negative equity positions.

And then whoever had lent
to them had to foreclose on them.

The fear is the cancer has spread
to the heart of European banking.

Anybody with a bit of insider
knowledge knew the writing was

on the wall,
and taking clients' money

in at that stage would
have been a problem.

He came and had this
investment proposal,

and that's what the
Destiny 119 Property Fund

was presented to us.

And he asked us if we were
interested in using some of the

cash that was
still in our pension.

They were looking
for more money

than we were prepared to put in.

They wanted 50,000
from each of us,

myself and my husband, both.

So we got receipts from
Canada Life for the 25,000

that was paid
into this fund.

They were selling it,
and everybody was told

something different.

I mean, one gentleman,
he was told the minimum

for that fund was 350,000,
and that's what he put into it.

Then there was a group of people,
and they had a company pension,

and each of them individually put
in money, but all of them thought

they were dealing
with something that Canada Life

itself was guaranteeing
and selling.

Other pension people who are
in this game many years have told

me, we would never advise people
of your age to move your

pension at that stage.
You were too old.

Starting in '08 and onwards
into '09 or '10 or '11,

CHC suppose a property
diversification

expeditions to Italy,
Germany, France, wherever.

They were now losing money,
even though Harry Cassidy wish

to present to the outside world
a picture everything is well.

And it must have been
that which spurred him to take

money from healthy funds
to prop up unhealthy funds.

Custom House Capital did not have
the permission to move client

monies into different funds or
different products without

their consent or instruction.

That's written
instruction to do that.

Yes.

And spinning plates in the air
and running from one plate

to the other to keep it spinning.

He may have thought at the time
that the drop in property values

being experienced in '07 and '08
would reverse themselves.

And that he was doing his
investors a favour by keeping

the show on the road.

I think there was one or two
meetings I was definitely

at in the boardroom in
the front of the building,

Overlooking Merrion Square.

We were going on what was printed
on the reports in relation

to the true value
that was obviously there.

He was effectively stealing.

The second problem we had was
that the drop in property values

continued and further exposed
the financial fraud that lay

at the heart of
what he was doing.

What we have here is the original
servers from Custom House Capital.

These servers were seized
by Gardaí

in 2011 under a court order.

They contained, obviously,
a huge amount of information

relevant to our investigation.

Because of the volume of data
and the multiplicity

of the victims,
that led to a decision that we

needed to look
for external support

using a data analysis
tool that was

not available
to GNECB at that time.

And so the report that
we got is around 2020 or 2021.

It can be quite daunting
at the start when you look

at terabytes of information,
you go,

My God, how are we
going to make sense of this?

But you have to come up
with a process as an investigation

team on what we're going to do,
how we're going to catalog

evidence, how we're going
to identify evidence.

Each individual member of
the team reviewed a report,

and we had a meeting that went
on for about three hours.

As we had the meeting,
we would look at some

of the evidence that we had
available, some of the data.

Custom House Capital
used a system called Unity.

And what essentially was,
it was a system that was a ledger

that they could keep track
of where investors' money was.

We were also able to reconstruct
the email server and we could see

what people were saying to each
other in around the the time

that this was going on.
The approach that was taken

at the beginning is that
we look at one injured party,

look what happened
to their money,

and treat that one transaction
as a fraud or a theft.

But when we actually realised
that there was simply going to be

too many transactions to do
that in Custom House Capital,

it would have been
thousands of transactions.

That's when the focus
turned to the email traffic.

Who was speaking to who,
and who was in charge,

and what role
did each person play?

There was people involved
that were doing certain things

that they probably
shouldn't have been,

but they might not have been
aware of the greater picture.

But certainly the heads of CHC

knew exactly
what was going on, and

that was evident from the emails.

At the end of that meeting,
we decided that we were going

to investigate it as a conspiracy

among the
senior management rather

than individual deceptions
of 73 individuals.

The whole focus of
the case changed thereafter.

So before even
we talk about how money was lost.

The foundations were quite shaken
how they were managed as well,

because the regulation regime
in 2007, when this all started

to happen,
wasn't as strong as it is now.

But at that time,
it was like the Wild West.

In the regulator's checks
in 2007,

four years before
this blew public,

four million of differences
between what some accounts said

were in them and what was
actually in them were identified.

It should have been absolutely
glass clear to the auditors

that these records were
in a mess.

My husband is a photographer, and
he went to a lot of social events.

He photographed a lot of
prize givings at various fancy

golf clubs and things like that.

He met one of the directors
who subsequently was jailed,

and he knew that
we had cash in our pension.

Now, Barry didn't know that we had
cash in our pension, but this guy

knew that
we had cash in our pension.

And then eventually,
we were approached by somebody

acting on behalf of Custom House
Capital through Canada Life.

They were desperate to get money
in, and I don't think they were

able to get enough money
from dealing with direct clients.

I suppose
at the start

of the investigation,
we have to figure out who's

involved, who's a suspect,
who's a staff member.

So we have to get an overall
picture of the inner workings

of Custom House Capital,
but we could tell from the outset

that the main people involved
appeared to be Harry Cassidy,

John White, John Mulholland,
and Paul Lavery also held a key

role as the financial
controller within the company.

When we look at the actual scheme
of what was going on,

it was essentially where clients
would be given valuation reports.

The Destiny Equity Fund had
32 million in it at one stage.

What these valuation reports would
What we say to the client is

that this is how your
money is performing,

this is
where your funds are.

When CHC started to chase,
they started cashing the equity

fund without the client's
consent or knowledge,

moving this cash
across here.

Every couple of months,
we would get a statement for each

person who is in the pension.

I was getting an update
from Canada Life,

which is the
most peculiar thing.

So this Valovis bond
here was moved out

into what's called a special

purpose vehicle, an SBV,
and this could have been

for a property in Germany.

Their funds had to be removed
from what we could see were

property funds in Europe.

The funds were then placed
in the correct place where

the investor thought
they should have been.

And once they had done that, they
would run the valuation report.

Paul Lavery would calculate
fictitious interest,

which would also be included
on the valuation report

that went to the investor.

So the investor would get their
valuation report and be happy

and confident that
my money's performing well.

Then falsified assets because
none of the money is where

it should have been
in cash or in equities.

And the investor would obviously
have absolutely no knowledge

of this whatsoever.

There's so many people
involved in the company.

How do you hide
something on this level?

How do you hide it?

And what we believe is
that the pop-up system on

the internal CHC computer was
the way the fraud was concealed.

So I'm just looking at one
particular note here.

When you type the client's
name in, it will say,

please contact Harry or Paul
before issuing any valuations.

That raises our suspicion
of surely

if an investor called CHC,

they can be advised of their
account status without having

to go to the head of the company.
There's a note on it.

Client should not be
in QIF II to investment.

These need to be backed out
to run a valuation as per PL.

Well, which we believe is
Paul Lavery, and he will

calculate what interest is due.

As we were going through
the email traffic, we can see

a reoccurring phrases,
for want of a better word,

and one of them was the term
needs to be backed out.

So we could search that term
on the email servers

looking for backed out.

And what we did discover was

it was instructions
being given to back

clients out so they could run
reports to deceive the clients.

And once that was done,
the money was returned.

But there was another example
of an an email,

Can you do your magic on this
account as the client is showing

an investment in property?

Client is showing an
investment in property.

Why should a client be showing
an investment in property unless

he's actually invested
in property?

So I think that one email alone
kinda nearly set the tone of what

was actually going on at
the time and the scale of what

was going on at the time.

In 2009,
the Central Bank sent

an inspector into CHC,
and they also restricted CHC from

taking on new investment monies.

In the investment world, that's
the equivalent of a yellow card.

Now, at that point in time,

with 1.1 billion of assets under
management, with 320 properties,

with 40 funds, it was
a complicated labyrinth

of a business already.
But only 20 % of that business

was actually the regulated side.

So the central bank had
no idea what was going on on

the unregulated side.

And there's paper trail saying,
that's not our problem.

And then they found that monies
had been taken from fund

A to prop up fund B.

So their solution was to try and
sell that part of the business,

Custom House Capital,
the regulated entity,

to Appian Asset Management
at one stage.

That was a terrible solution.

Appian Asset Management,
in good faith, took the leap

and did that in 2009, 2010.

Definitely around the time
that Appian were looking at buying

into CHC,
I think John probably spoke

to my dad in relation to,
we're looking to sell

the business on or there's going
to be a change in ownership on it.

It took one of the staff members
actually just raise their hands

and say, there's an issue here.

Yeah, it was.

Angela Mahon,
she took up a position

in Custom House Capital in 2007.

And she was promoted
in 2008 to

Head of Finance and Operations.

So she was at
a more senior level.

And she attended a meeting where
there was a discussion

on a shortfall
in an investment in property

in Germany, something
around around 11 million.

She realised that
they didn't have the money

to meet that shortfall.

And she learned that money
was being taken from

clients' accounts.

She said that was wrong,
and she contested that

with the senior managers.

Basically,
she was overrun by the senior

management team,
and she decided that she couldn't

put up with this,
and she resigned her position.

She was asked by two of the
senior managers not to resign.

One actually said,
you're only a young person.

You have to realise there's
a commercial reality,

sometimes, and when that
commercial reality is there,

integrity goes out the window.

She left in late 2008,
and in 2009, she actually had

to contact CHC to get her P45.

And in that conversation
with a senior manager, she asked

had the situation been resolved?

And it had not.

And at that point,
she made a disclosure to the

financial regulator.

And then she cooperated fully
with the Garda investigation

in terms of, as a witness.

WOMAN: I was in the car,
and I started reading it,

it possibly
mentioned liquidation.

And I just messaged
Harry immediately.

Just, what the fuck?

And he came back to
all blown out of proportion,

nothing to be worried
about whatsoever.

And we now know, of course,
that was the top of the slope.

Custom House Capital were one
of these companies that were

registered by the Pensions Board,
and I invested my life savings,

which goes back nearly 40 years
of contributions for my pension.

My mom is elderly, when she was
in her 80s, she decided it might

be a good idea to sell her house.

My dad had died some years
before. Say that, Pattie.

John, good afternoon.

How's the form, Joe?

Are you a victim
of Custom House Capital?

Absolutely.
Up to the walls.

But it was a huge scam
from day one

because the
financial statements

we used to get every six
months were falsified.

The shareholders, people who ran
the firm were very well known.

They were recognised
in the industry.

John Mulholland,
John White, Harry Catsby.

Custom House Capital got over
one billion from investors.

It's more white-collar crime
in this country.

The first anybody really knew
if this was in July,

and at that point,
there was a freeze,

and you could not
take your money out.

The ship had sunk at that point.

I was due to retire about
the end of December.

After that, I would have
no funds whatsoever.

There's people who had
every penny that they own

in terms of what they provided
for their old age

in that fund, and it's gone.
What about you, Patrick?

Have you told your friends?

No, I haven't.
Why not?

It would be very embarrassing.

Well, I wouldn't be
embarrassed about it.

Patrick, you say you
stand to lose your house

at the end of the month.
Well, I could.

We're sending people to jail
for not taking a TV fee.

And all these people are
walking about scotfree

after throwing away millions on
people, their pensions,

their life schemes, people
are going to lose their house.

Out in the street,
in your bare feet.

Scamers,
the country is so corrupt.

Joe Duffy.

I was sitting
listening to Joe Duffy.

Once I established it was
my investment, I kinda of...

knocked off Joe Duffy and
got on the phone.

And basically, he just told me,
there's no money in this for you.

You will get nothing back.

And he was quite blunt about it.

Well, shortly after John White
told my aunt, sent her a cheque.

There was no indication
right up to that minute.

But Christ, of all the people
I know in life,

how hard this
money was earned.

Every day, grinding away,
getting up at all hours

in the morning, and
to lose it all just like that.

The regulator was writing
letters to Custom House Capital

long before we ever transferred
our pensions to them.

Had we known that,
we would have never done it,

but we didn't know.

There were so many people
who didn't do their job properly,

coming back to Central Bank
and not actually managing

the business, and
the Pensions Authority,

did all these people
fail at what they did?

There was an environment there
that allowed these people to do

the things they were going to do.

So there was
a number of arrests

carried out as part
of the investigation.

Harry Cassidy, Paul Lavery,
and John White were

arrested in 2012, initially.

But again, there was
a second round of arrests

conducted in 2019,

and that was obviously done
at a time when the investigation

team had built up
a lot more knowledge

of what actually went on.

REPORTER: The Dublin
district Court heard that

the three men were all
arrested in Dublin earlier today

by the Garda National
Economic Crime Bureau.

John Mulholland was
arrested in 2019.

Paul Lavery was
arrested again in 2019.

John White was also
arrested again in 2019.

We had sought to arrest
Harry Cassidy again in 2019,

but he wouldn't present
to Gardaí voluntarily to be

arrested on the advice
of his solicitor.

He was in Germany at the time.

I believe, possibly
he was teaching English

as a foreign language.

The court heard John Mulholland,
John White, and Paul Lavery

made no reply when charged.

He was ultimately arrested
by the German police.

I believe he spent approximately
about three months in custody

in Germany, but in the end,
he decided to return back to this

jurisdiction where he was
met and ultimately charged.

After it all collapsed
with Custom House Capital

and the liquidators moved in,
I used to receive

a letter every year.

The balance was zero.

I don't know the story of how

these properties
ended up being sold

the way they were for as
little as they were.

The buildings are still there.

The rent is still there.

So therefore, there's no reason
why there should be a problem

with any of these things.

But of course, with the times,
that were in it, they

become a fire sale.

Yeah,
we got 550 euros each back.

That's it.

And for the regulated side,

where people had money
in regulated

investments,
there's a thing called

the Investor Compensation Fund.

The maximum that
the Investor Compensation Fund

can pay out is
20,000 per investor.

And people may have had
savings from an entire lifetime

that had to look after
them in their old age,

parked in CHC, and to have
that so sharply reduced

probably would unleash medical
symptoms in some of them.

Her health was failing.

She'd been in hospital
several times.

Now, my fear was
we'd get the phone call

to say she's fallen,
and that then I would get calls

to say we need money to pay
for her nursing home.

Now, God forbid, had
she ever rung me and said, Nick,

get on to Harry and tell him
I need 10 grand or 20 grand.

I would have had to say to her,
Helga, there is no 10 or 20 grand.

Now, how could you say
that to somebody

who built their...

This was her life,
the fear that the phone would

ring, because she was very unwell.

She was finally brought
in the hospital during COVID,

and she died there alone,
only the hospital staff.

We rang, but they said,
there's no point in coming over.

And that's what frightened me
most in the last year.

And thankfully,
I didn't have to tell her.

I think it came to a stage
where he wouldn't even

talk about it anymore
because he knew he was...

Not much he could
actually do about it.

His health was failing.

He'd lost his wife.

He was spending three days a week
in hospital having dialysis.

So his life had
become quite insular.

And with that then, I suppose
everything began to just

cave in on top of him.

I got a letter first, and I got
invited to a meeting in town.

There were people there, and
they were seriously aggrieved.

I think there was one guy had
something like 50,000,

and he was furious.

And I'm sitting there with
the cold realisation

that nearly 400 grand

on my part had been put by this
broker into Custom House Capital

on one bet.

Yes, which was a very
awkward conversation.

And I had to explain to them
as they were coming up

to retirement that
their pensions were gone.

And in my opinion, they
would I never see any of them.

At the end of the day,
the book stopped with me.

I made the decision.
It was my decision

as the trustee
of the company.

It was the wrong decision.

It was my decision,
and I had to own it.

I was assigned to cover the
sentence hearing of the four men.

So the presiding Judge,
Judge Orla Crowe, she was sitting

that day in courtroom 12.

I remember going up in
the lift and walking in,

and it was just so busy.

There were so many
people in that courtroom.

It was a very sad day,
to be honest, because there were

widows where the husband
had died since,

but all their money had gone

into a pension fund through Custom
House Capital and lost everything.

It seemed to take an eternity
to get from the back of the court

up to the box
and then to have the accused

sitting right in front of you.

But the Judge, I thought,
handled it very well.

And of course,
the newspapers were all over it.

So there were 197 victim impact
statements handed into the court,

and four of them
were read out by

affected investors in
Custom House Captial

or by family members
of those investors

who had passed away.

I saw a woman cry.

She said,
I put my pension fund in.

And she said, it means I'll
have to go back to work at 65.

She was crying, but
nobody put their arms around

her and said,
it'll be all right.

It is only now that
I approach retirement age

that the full impact of this theft
is starting to manifest itself.

In the past, I pushed it
to the back of my mind,

but for the last few years,
I cannot shake it off.

It causes me many sleepless nights
nowadays, and I constantly

worry about my financial future.

With the world the way it is now,
I have two adult children

still living at home,
and I maybe could have helped them

with a deposit on a house if
this money had not been stolen.

I've lived my entire life
in South Inner City, Dublin,

and in a broader sense, this
crime has also compounded my

belief that there is
a demonus in Irish society,

which robbed me and my family
of a more secure retirement.

Having worked continuously
for the last 45 years and never

relying on the state for a single
cent, I don't think that this

was too much to aspire to.

Now, there were four guys
being sentenced.

They all had their own
legal counsel, separately.

Each of them stood up and
advocated for why their guy

shouldn't go to prison.

It was all like cats in a sack,
just all fighting,

trying to be the one who doesn't
go to prison or doesn't

get the worst sentence.

And the way they were talking
about these guys,

it was like they
were paragons of virtue.

I turned around to Barry
and said,

I'm going to start feeling sorry

for them soon if they keep
on going on like this.

I said, are these guys talking
about these men who have

defrauded all of these people?

So Harry Cassidy and John
Mulholland took 2.3 million out,

discreetly out of company

in commissions directly
to a Luxembourg bank account,

and a Tenerife property was
bought for John Mulholland.

So they were profiting
during this period of time

from 2007 to 2011,
personally, as well

as drawing out salaries.

Sixty years of his life working,
putting away money to support

himself in the
allotted years of his life

that he was going to be
able to enjoy.

Then to see it all,
the majority of it all wiped away

was really frustrating for him.

And one of them was trying
to say that he was so

much younger and
all this kinda stuff,

and I was a bit led
and all that.

And the judge was like,
you're an adult.

Take responsibility.

The Judge noticed in her
sentencing remarks that the men,

threw their guilty pleas, that
meant that the state was saved

a very long and complex trial.

REPORTER: The judge Judge said
67-year-old Harry Cassidy,

the co-founder and
Chief Executive Officer of CHC,

was in charge of the entire
conspiracy and breached

all trust placed in him.

She sentenced him
to seven years in jail.

53-year-old John White,
the Head of Private Clients,

was given four years.

Paul Lavery, who is 47, was
Head of Finance and carried out

directions he knew were wrong,
the Judge said,

jailing him for three years.

73-year-old John Mulholland,
a Co-Founder and a non-executive

director,
pleaded guilty to neglectfully

discharging his duties as
a director and was

jailed for 12 months.

Judge Crowe said many
of the victims felt shame,

but that was misplaced.

She said they had been
systematically deceived

in a sophisticated operation,

which went on
for almost three years.

The most dramatic part of it,
looking back now,

was when the guards came in
to take them away to the cell.

A lesson there to the professions,
that there is a price to be paid.

If they misappropriate
people's funds.

I'm very happy that even when
he does come out, he will

still be a convicted felon.

He's a criminal,
and he will have done time.

Thankfully, we still have our
health and we have

a vibrant family.

My wife still works,
but I turned 74 this month.

It's difficult because we're
reliant on the state pension

and then a few bits and pieces.

I suppose I took,
and I still take,

a philosophical
approach to it all.

There's no point in me
getting angry about it.

I heard of people who borrowed
money to put into that scheme,

and they're the people
I really feel sorry for it.

You just move on.

I think Irish people,
they don't like talking about

misgivings or they don't like
talking about being taken for a

fool or being taken for granted.

So there'll be a lot of people,
I think, that will just

take it to their grave.

And we brought her ashes
up to Kilnadeema,

and she's buried beside
her husband, with my godmother.

Lately, I've been starting
to realise,

not that it went bad,
it was criminal.

It was an offence.
People have gone to jail for it.

Years after the collapse
and the whole lot,

we actually worked in the
building that they operated from,

in Merrion Square. And
I walked up to the door,

there's, Custom House Capital
looking at me.

They never took the plaque off
the building at that stage.

I think it's sad that anybody
would think that

they had done
something wrong.

You're supposed to work hard

and you earn a few bob
and you set

a few bob aside and you
invest it somewhere

so that
it's going to grow.

You will be able to provide
for yourself,

and you won't be depending
on the state,

and you won't be depending
on your kids,

and you'll be able to afford
all the things that you still

need to do
when you're retired.

That's what we're supposed to be
able to look forward to in this

green and pleasant land.

♪

SUBTITLES: RTÉ, 2026.