Samantha Cookes scammed her way around Ireland. How was she caught?

Conor Lally looks at how Cookes was caught and what drove her

Listen | 31:28
Samantha Cookes. Photograph: Domnick Walsh.
Samantha Cookes. Photograph: Domnick Walsh.

Compulsive liar and serial fraudster Samantha Cookes has shot to international infamy after her activities were unmasked by the police, newspaper journalists, online sleuths and podcasters.

She is serving a sentence in Limerick Prison having been jailed over a €60,000 social welfare fraud. She passed herself off as terminally ill and claimed the benefits that came along with her (fictitious) condition, Huntington’s Disease.

That fraud, however, is only a tiny fraction of her story.

On today’s podcast crime and security editor Conor Lally explains this puzzling case.

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Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon.

Bernice Harrison

Bernice Harrison

Bernice Harrison is an Irish Times journalist and cohost of In the News podcast