Omagh man avoids jail over £60,000 investment fraud

A ‘WALTER Mitty’ fraudster from Tyrone who carried out an investment scam involving ten victims has been handed a suspended jail sentence.

Ryan Timothy O’Kane (51), of Tamlaght Road in Omagh, pleaded guilty to 21 charges of fraud by abuse of position and three charges of converting criminal property.

The offending occurred between July 2018 and May 2019, when O’Kane was operating as the company director of ‘Darma Trading International’.

Belfast Crown Court heard last Wednesday that the company had now been dissolved and that O’Kane had paid back all the investors whom he defrauded.

Prior to passing sentence, Judge Richard Greene KC was addressed by Crown barrister Michael McAleer who said O’Kane’s criminality concerned him purporting to engage in a financial proposal to investors.

After receiving money, O’Kane told them he was going to invest this on the Foreign Exchange market using specialist software.

O’Kane also told the investors that he would turn a profit for them and that they would be able to access update reports on their investment.

Mr McAleer said, “Ultimately he took the monies but he didn’t enter into the agreement that he was to invest the money in foreign exchange.”

Instead, no updates were provided to the investors and O’Kane withdrew their money from the business account for his own purposes.

Branding O’Kane as ‘somewhat of a Walter Mitty’, the prosecutor said the Crown was unable to ascertain what he did with the money he fraudulently obtained but ‘he didn’t do what he said he would do’.

The court heard that after an investor contacted the PSNI, an investigation was launched and a total of ten victims were identified in an investment scam which amounted to between £50,000 and £60,000.

Meanwhile, defence barrister Eoin Devlin told the court that, in most cases, the defendant had paid people back more than they originally invested.

Describing the fraud as ‘very strange’, Mr Devlin said it was hard to understand his client’s motivation and the fraud was always going to be detected.

Describing the case as ‘classic fraud’, the judge observed that ‘given the lack of investment it was clearly fraudulent from the outset and set up purely for the purpose of making a fraudulent profit from unsuspecting investors’.

Noting O’Kane’s clear criminal record, his stable family background and strong work history, Judge Greene said he also accepted all those involved had been reimbursed. He imposed a 20-month sentence, which he suspended for two-and-a-half years, then told O’Kane, “You are free to go.”