The Cork grifters who 'were unlucky to get caught' in sophisticated bank fraud

Two Cork solicitors were jailed today after an investigation into an elaborate years-long fraud caught up with them. But what turned two bright, qualified young people into Cork’s Bonnie and Clyde?

Former solicitors Keith Flynn and Lyndsey Clarke outside Cork District court last year. The court heard that Clarke has suffered from depression in the past, while Flynn, following his striking from the roll of solicitors, was subsequently declared bankrupt in January 2017. Photo: Cork Courts Limited

Back in 2014, Lyndsey Clarke was making her own headlines. 

Running as a Fine Gael candidate in the local elections, she knocked up a mini-newspaper called North West News, exactly the kind of tongue-in-cheek hokum we have come to associate with canvassing, featuring a photo of the solicitor in a boxing ring under the headline 'Clarke promises to come out fighting'.