A serial fraudster, who worked as an au pair for families across the country under multiple aliases for a decade, is now the subject of a new theft and fraud offences Garda investigation. The fresh Garda inquiry into Samantha Cookes, who is currently serving a prison sentence for a €60,000 social welfare fraud, is being carried out by gardaí in Kerry.
The 36-year-old, originally from Gloucester, lived in the county, in Cahersiveen and Kenmare, for three years to the end of 2022. She also spent time there last year, when she was arrested in Tralee as part of the social welfare inquiry.
While there she was selling sensory toys for children with special needs via a website. While she claimed online she was making the toys with a 3D printer, no toys were ever delivered to people who ordered and paid sums online. Furniture also went missing from a house she was renting in Kenmare, where she sublet the property via Airbnb without permission.
Her activities in Co Kerry are now being investigated as part of a new theft and fraud offences criminal investigation, which sources said was nearing a conclusion and may result in new criminal charges.
Convicted fraudster Samantha Cooke: how she was caught and what drove her
While in Kerry, she also posed as a terminally ill writer, Carrie Jade Williams, and won awards for some of her writing, including pieces based on her fake assumed identity of a writer dying from Huntington’s disease. She secured Arts Council grants, in 2021 and 2022, totalling €36,250.
Cookes is not terminally ill and has been in Ireland just over a decade, during which time she has adapted multiple aliases and worked as a live-in au pair for couples with young children.
Last July she was arrested outside a post office in Tralee for social welfare fraud of €60,334.35 after securing payments based on her claimed, though faked, medical condition. She was sentenced to three years earlier this month and has been in prison since her arrest last summer.
In May 2019 she was convicted in the courts in Cork on four fraud and theft charges, with a 14-week suspended sentence imposed. Three charges related to a bogus trip to Lapland she claimed to be organising while living in south Co Dublin in 2016, and which she collected deposits for before she disappeared.
[ The Samantha Cookes story: Inside the mind of a pathological liarOpens in new window ]
The other charge related to an assessment she carried out on a child in Cork in 2017, for which she was paid €840, while pretending to be a child psychologist.
In 2011, Ms Cookes was convicted of fraud in Britain after taking money from a couple who wanted to enter into a surrogacy arrangement with her. After taking an initial £1,200 from them, she discontinued contact with them. A nine-month sentence was fully suspended.
