Detective takes his hat off to Lynn’s ‘Walter Mitty’ defence

THERE is no animosity between adversaries when it comes to Michael Lynn and the man who brought him to justice.

At the start of his first trial last year, Lynn made a point of shaking Detective Inspector Paddy Linehan’s hand.

And this week – just before Lynn was found guilty – Linehan reciprocated the gesture.

‘Michael Lynn himself, my personal experience of him, is that he was always very affable and pleasant,’ he told the Irish Mail on Sunday.

‘I’d say he’d be great company. I’d say he’d be the life and soul of a party.’

According to Det Insp Linehan, disarming characteristics such as these are not unusual among criminals.

‘I think fraudsters, by their nature, have that ability. They are highly intelligent people with a gift of selling themselves in a light that isn’t necessarily the real thing and I have come across many people like that in my career.

‘Con men and con artists, they’re always very plausible.

They’re always great salesmen,’ he said.

‘They would be very capable and successful people if they hadn’t got that chink in the armour where they have to steal monies,’ he added.

Det Insp Linehan conceded that Lynn’s imaginative defence – that he had arranged several secret deals with bankers who conspired with him in order to deceive the system – was an inspired one.

‘You would have to say it was a great defence because it was something we never thought of.

‘That’s not something that arose until he mentioned it and I think every witness that was called to rebut it showed in their demeanour and their evidence that they [the so-called secret deals] didn’t exist.

‘I can understand maybe, with the way the banks were, that they could have favoured certain big clients in relation to offering them loans,’ Det Insp Linehan said.

But he rubbished the idea of bankers conspiring to lend millions on several properties that they already knew had been pledged to other lenders, for purposes other than those that had been agreed on the loan applications.

‘It just made no sense and that was his argument. It was all Walter Mitty stuff to me.

‘His stories were, I believe, all mistruths and were made up to deflect from his own responsibility.’

Det Insp Linehan was one of the many gardaí involved in the investigation into Michael Lynn over the years.

Others included Inspector Adrian Kelly and Detective Niamh Seabury, whom Linehan credits as being vital to building the case against Lynn from the beginning.

Later, detectives Seán McClafferty, Laura Barton, Daniel Queeney, Ivor Scully and Jacinta Naughten were also on the team, together with Sergeant Seán O’Riordan, Detective Sergeant Ger Coomey and Detective Sergeant Shane Curtis.