A PENNILESS Scottish bankrupt conned a businesswoman into financing a new venture by claiming to be a millionaire who had won the Queen’s Award for Exports.
Patrick McGarry was branded as “a thoroughly dishonest man” by a judge after he heard he had cheated creditors and told a string of lies about his qualifications.
He claimed to have degrees or doctorates from Plymouth and London universities, to be a medical doctor, to own several homes in Cornwall and have £11 million in the bank.
In reality he was an undischarged bankrupt who owed £500,000 after the collapse of his WRS Energy wind farm firm helped set up in Scotland. He conned the official receiver by secretly transferring money to his adult sons, failing to disclose a pension he cashed in, and not declaring a £130-a-day consultancy.
He persuaded Sheila Barrington to invest £2,000, saying he was a wealthy doctor with properties in Cornwall and showed her a bank statement with an £11m balance.
McGarry, 62, whose business address in Scotland was Melville Crescent, Edinburgh, but who now lives in Cornwall, admitted two counts of fraud, running a company while bankrupt, and four counts of concealing or failing to declare income or assets.
He was jailed for 16 months, suspended for two years, and curfewed for three months at Exeter Crown Court.
Judge Erik Salomonsen told him: “It is clear during this period of time you were thoroughly dishonest. For your own reasons you determined you were not going to acknowledge your bankruptcy and chose to proceed as you had done before.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article