Documentary on Michael Lynn asks where did the money go?
One of the loose ends that still exists with the Michael Lynn story is the question of what happened with the money, virtually none of which has been recovered.
When solicitor Michael Lynn fled Ireland in December 2007, he’d clocked up €80 million in loans from high street banks, much of them fraudulently secured via multiple mortgages. He also he owed another €12 million to private investors who had paid out for unbuilt apartments abroad.
Former solicitor Lynn was convicted in December 2023 of stealing almost €18 million from various banks after a decades-long international manhunt and two marathon trials.
He was later jailed for five and a half years.
A new two-part documentary series beginning on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player on Monday night, highlights new links involving a Bulgarian business associate of Michael Lynn's setting up companies in Ireland relating to property development, and those company accounts being accessed by Mr Lynn's wife, Brid Murphy withdrawing cash in the last year.
Michael Lynn: The Fugitive reveals the true story of an epic hunt to bring one of Ireland’s most notorious fugitives to justice told directly by the reporter who tracked him down, his victims, and former employees. The two-part series is directed by Trevor Birney and produced by Fine Point Films for RTÉ.
Irish Mail on Sunday Journalist Michael O'Farrell and photographer Sean Dwyer ended up hunting Michael Lynn down all over the world, from Portugal to Bulgaria to a hellhole prison in Brazil.
Viewers will hear for the first time the recording of Michael Lynn admitting : "I was on my own personal drugged up ambition, fuelled by the desire to succeed. I was the Celtic Cub."
Paul Ryan a retired PE Teacher from Dublin paid a deposit to buy an apartment in Portugal: "Michael Lynn stole roughly €60,000 from me. I didn't discuss it with my family or my daughters because I felt a terrible sense of guilt that I had lost all this money. The apartment... the dream was retirement. Our family could come and visit or we can all meet. That was a dream."
"What you call the legal system in the state didn't seem to have any interest in what the small person had lost in this particular aspect. It was all about banks."
Sean O'Mahony a Publican from Killarney in Kerry told the RTÉ documentary: "Michael Lynn stole up to €50,000 from me and my family. Early in 2000 unfortunately, my wife got cancer. I took my own voluntary redundancy so that I could stay at home full time with her. I came across the company Kendar through a friend of mine who was an auctioneer at the time. And my wife, she got a voluntary redundancy and she wanted to invest that in a property abroad so our two girls would remember her going forward."
"It was an awful time in our life. But to think that we had to deal with a situation like Michael Lynn as well. We wrote to the president. We wrote to the Taoiseach. We wrote to the Department of Justice. We wrote to everyone possible to see could we get help. But unfortunately, we were ignored."