A ‘cold email’ that led to the low-cost sale of the home

ON JULY 9, 2014, a junior member of the finance team at Our Lady’s Hospice received a ‘cold email’ from an individual purporting to be based in the US.

The email noted the address of the Hospice’s Aloha Lake Village property and offered to buy it sight unseen for €37,500.

The property was conservatively worth €200,000 more than that.

The email also referred to the property as ‘being on the market’ even though this was not the case.

According to an audit of the subsequent sale, head of finance Denis Maguire is understood to have been ‘aware of the offer and verbally approved’ its acceptance.

On July 16, Mr Maguire then forwarded the sale correspondence to the charity’s solicitor and asked them to arrange the legalities.

The sale went through on March 15, 2015. It was sold to a firm in the USA. This firm was established on November 11, 2014 – four months after the ‘cold email’ offer.

The audit did not name this US entity or its ultimate owner, a man who presented himself before a public notary in Dublin in order to transact the deal. But the Irish Mail on Sunday has confirmed via Spanish land records that the buyer was New York firm Sun Orange Properties LLC.

This firm, which remains the owner to this day, was set up by a Michael Egan with an address in Yonkers, New York. Mr Egan has also been named as a defendant in the High Court case being taken by the hospice against Mr Maguire.

The owners of the Yonkers address – Michael Gillespie and his wife Louise – said they had a number of tenants there but had never heard of Michael Egan or Sun Orange Properties.

The residents’ association at Aloha Lake Village also lists Sun Orange Properties LLC, care of Michael Egan, as owner of No.14. But the address given to the resident’s association for Sun Orange Properties appears to be a false or mistaken Florida address.

The contact number that the residents’ association has for Mr Egan corresponds to that of LexMarbella, a long-established and reputable law firm in Marbella.

When contacted by the MoS, lawyer Rodrigo Blanco said he could not ‘disclose any confidential information whatsoever about clients’. Mr Blanco said that in any property transaction his firm’s role was limited ‘to ensuring that all documentation is in order’, adding: ‘We have no say whatsoever in the price paid for a property.’