TV review: Swindlers: The Thomas Byrne Affair is worth a watch
Swindlers: The Thomas Byrne Affair available on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player
Thomas Byrne started out as a solicitor in the mid-1990s, working out of an extension to his family home in Walkinstown. His business caught the wave of the Celtic Tiger, when half the country became property developers. He ended up facing 51 charges of theft, fraud, and forgery.
It’s all in (RTÉ One and RTÉ Player). It’s as much a story about 1990s Ireland as it is about Thomas Byrne. The story is laid out by Terry and Matthew Connors in Walkinstown who started buying and flipping properties so they could retire at 50, with Byrne doing the paperwork as their portfolio grew up to 14 properties.
Byrne then got into the property business himself. Five years later, he had 14 staff and was paying himself half a million a year.
There are multiple red-flags ignored during Byrne’s career, not least that he wore a dickie-bow in UCD. Finally, he ends up in court, accused of stealing €60m from banks and clients.
The show uses multiple narrators, but by the end of part one, I wasn’t entirely sure what Byrne had done. He was getting a lot of money from the banks, apparently some of it fraudulently, but the mechanics of the fraud weren’t made clear. Someone needed to give us a solicitor-fraud-for-dummies lesson. Instead, the story jumped ahead in time to trial, revealing how Byrne tried to blame everybody except himself for what happened, without explaining what actually happened.
Anyway, on to part two. The narrative is with journalists Brian Carroll and Dearbhail McDonald, two steady hands who make it clear that the banks’ lack of regulation and oversight was a significant part of the problem. In their view, Byrne became the scapegoat. The allegations against Byrne are finally explained. He had taken out multiple mortgages on properties and forged signatures to transfer ownership of client properties to himself.
The best bit of the show is the guy who investigated Byrne. He reveals that a colleague even gave Byrne a hug one day, he was at such a low ebb. But he also noted the banks didn’t really co-operate.
Byrne isn’t a sympathetic character. He stole a house from his old piano teacher, a 90-year-old woman. He never apologised to his victims, most of whom were left with nothing. He was put away for 12 years.
Terry Connors didn’t get to retire early. I’d say some of the bankers did. For that message alone, this show is worth a watch.
