Doctor in disgrace
A family tragedy and a series of affairs: inside story of the surgeon who has been jailed for fraud
THE surgeon who has been jailed for eight years after he was found guilty of insurance and mortgage fraud is expected to appeal both the conviction and the prison sentence.
This weekend, as Meath-born Anthony McGrath settles into his compact single cell at Her Majesty’s Peterborough prison in England, his home for the foreseeable future, he must surely be wondering about his considerable change in circumstances.
For if outward appearances amount anything then it would seem the 45-year-old had it all.
The handsome Irish-born doctor grew up amid the splendour of a 19th century mansion set in rolling countryside and woods in Co. Meath. And until recently, he lived with his doctor wife Anne-Louise and their four privately educated children in an imposing Edwardian two-storey residence, on one of the most sought-after streets in the upmarket London commuter belt of St Alban’s.
With an eye-catching Maserati car parked out front in the driveway, there was no reason to doubt the evident fruits of his success and ambition.
However, last week he found himself branded by an English judge as ‘arrogant’.
In a withering summation of the insurance scam and mortgage fraud case against him, Judge Barbara Mensah accused him of ‘breathtaking brazenness’.
The judge told him: ‘Through your talents, you rose to be a successful surgeon and fell,
She found out in court he was cheating on her
through greed and arrogance, to where you sit today.’
Meanwhile, his wife Anne-Louise McGrath, 44, was cleared by the jury of being involved in the £180,000 (€200,000) fraud with her husband. She was also found not guilty of retaining items of jewellery that her husband had claimed were stolen.
It also emerged during the trial that McGrath had had a series of affairs behind his wife’s back and had sent tens of thousands of text messages to his lovers.
He confessed in court that he was unable to remember how many women he had cheated with.
His behaviour led the prosecuting lawyer to say he obviously thought ‘monogamy is something to do with furniture, not marriage’.
A source who knows the couple revealed: ‘Anthony has 28 days from the day of his conviction to lodge an appeal and he already has told his legal team that he wants to appeal.
‘This means he will probably also appeal the sentence. When the case started in May 2017, he and AnneLouise were very much together and she was supporting him.
‘They had a volatile relationship and Anne-Louise said that she only found out in court that Anthony had been cheating on her with other women.’
It also emerged in court that he made two false mortgage applications on the family home worth almost £1m in total.
And when the second false mortgage was secured on the family home, McGrath sent a text to the female broker who had helped secure the mortgage.
The text read: ‘Please give me your bank account. I want to give you some pocket money for being so good.’
It was also revealed that in a series of other texts he told the broker that she ‘looked well’, scored her ten out of ten, and repeatedly asked her to go out for dinner.
The orthopaedic surgeon masterminded the doomed financial scam after running up serious debts. He decided to make a false report to police that the house he and his family were renting on a country estate had been burgled and valuable antiques stolen.
In his subsequent claim to the insurers, McGrath maintained that property stolen included expensive antiques and furniture, jewellery, silverware, artwork, Ming vases, oriental rugs, crystal ware and a 19th-century Rococo marble fireplace worth £30,000.
The eight-year jail sentence imposed on him last week has left aghast those who knew Anthony, when he and his four siblings lived with their accomplished parents at Somerville House in Co. Meath.
Located on the outskirts of the village of Kentstown, the striking stately home was acquired by Anthony’s orthopaedic surgeon father Joe in 1994 for £100,000.
Just four years after buying the property, the McGraths’ only daughter, Orla, was killed in a car accident within sight of the house. Those who know the family recalled how the horrific smash – which not only claimed Orla’s life but also nearly took the life of his youngest brother – was a turning point for the entire family.
Six years after the crash, Joe died. His English-born wife Jennifer died six years later in 2010.
Then, two of the couple’s sons found themselves at the heart of the criminal case in the UK – one of them as a defendant, the other as a State witness against his brother.
One local explained: ‘That accident killed the family. They were able to see where the accident happened from the windows of Somerville House and they had to look at that accident spot every day from the windows of their home.
‘I have no doubt that Orla’s father Joe died of a broken heart. The McGraths were a lovely family… I just can’t understand or believe that Anthony was up in court. And that his brother Conor had to go as state witness… He was a witness against his own brother.’
In April 2015, the Meath surgeon reported that 95 items, including a 19th century red marble fire place, a £34,000 Persian rug, antique clocks, valuable antiques and jewellery, were stolen during a breakin at the rental property.
But police became suspicious when they discovered McGrath and his wife were ‘tens of thousands of pounds in debt’.
When detectives launched an investigation they discovered that around the time of the robbery, the 45-year-old had hired a van and driven it to his family’s stately home in Meath.
When gardaí arrived at Somerville House, they found the supposedly stolen fireplace there, and in a follow-up search of his English home, police found other items including a sapphire and diamond ring, a chess set and two Mont Blanc pens that had been reported as missing. But when questioned, McGrath claimed the items were ‘merely similar’ to those he had reported as stolen.
‘He thought monogamy was to do with furniture’