Fraud is the new black.
In the “oh-so-sweetly-recent” Irish past, money was stuff you insulated the dog’s house with. When parking spaces sell for more than most everyone earned last year, inevitably, some bright spark starts to think “Hey I may as well pull a few yo-yo’s out from that pile, which, after-all is JUST SO DAMNED BIG, that nobody will look too closely at where that extra bit of dosh really went.”
In March I learned that the man I thought was my lawyer is neither a lawyer, nor to be trusted. In fact, his former employers now say that he defrauded a sum so large they hesitate to actually specify how much it was that he stole. (Weirdly, instead of leaving the country, this guy has chosen to just keep telling ever-bigger lies, in the time-honoured tradition of all prime-time TV law shows, which clearly state that when you can’t blind them with the glaring truth, the only remaining legally sound course of action is to baffle everyone with as much bullshit as you can fling.)
The whole mess has got me humming the words to a pretty cool Randy Newman song – Big Hat, No Cattle – which, my partner pointed out is rather apropos, given that the crook in question is both a keen Randy Newman fan, and a member of the Irish Cattleman’s Association – or, at least, we think he is – but then, we also thought he was a qualified lawyer, so you might want to double check that… in any case, the song goes something like this:
“An honest man these days is hard to find.
I only know we’re living in an unforgiving land.
And a little lie can buy some real big piece of mind.
Oftimes I wondered what might I have become,
Had I but buckled down and really tried.
But when it came down to the wire
I called my family to my side
Stood up straight, threw my head back and I lied, lied, lied …
Big hat, no cattle
Big shoes, well you know…
Big hat, no cattle
Big head, no brain
Big snake, no rattle …
Big belly, no heart.”
So, me and my tale of woe have been to see no less than six new lawyers, each of whom has been charged with helping to clean up at least one of the many, overlapping, but clearly defined nasty little compartments that this kind gent thoughtfully sorted his fraudulent activities into.
But enough about me and my recurring nightmares – what is far, far, more interesting is the fact that every professional I have spoken to has expressed their profound sympathy – and then sighed, and confessed that mine is not the only such story they have heard of late.
In fact, it appears that in the good times, professional fraud was nearly as common as tooth decay. Is human nature just intrinsically bad – or is this something peculiar to the Irish condition?
Willie O’Dea lost his Ministerial post as a consequence of LIES he swore to in front of a judge – but, hey, I bet he’s still collecting his Ministerial pension!
And therein seems to lie the crux of the matter; we have no real appetite for actually punishing thieves, even when their crimes are so obvious we have to wear sunglasses to avoid being burnt by the glare.
