$20m fraudster had everyone fooled

Damian O'Carrigan's double life was a complete shock to his wife Julie. Source: The Sunday Mail (Qld)

DAMIAN O'Carrigan was outwardly a devoted husband, father and a trusted manager with one of the nation's biggest firms.

He had also siphoned $20 million from his employer over more than a decade, while having secret affairs and building his own property and racing empire.

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Speaking about the incredible double life for the first time, the wife of the knockabout finance manager this week lifted the lid on one of the state's biggest frauds.

"You've got to remember that my husband was my hero," Julie O'Carrigan told The Sunday Mail, insisting she had no knowledge of the crimes.

"I knew him like the back of my hand. When this first broke I thought you've got to be joking, you've all made a tremendous mistake."

His wife also said O'Carrigan:

Former Leighton manager Damian O'Carrigan with former Queensland premier Peter Beattie. Pic SUPPLIED

ADMITTED he had several affairs.

LAVISHED gifts on at least one former lover and friends.

USED a "sugar daddies" dating website to meet young women.

Mrs O'Carrigan said the family was now paying the price after the unravelling of his years of deception.

She said she faced being left penniless after her husband's arrest and will be forced to apply for public housing and a disability pension.

She said the bank had threatened to foreclose on her west Brisbane home and other properties and she had until March 4 to pay.

Auctioneers scoured her home looking for oil paintings and expensive jewellery but found only animal prints and a few gifts to his wife over the years.

She said she was not involved in paying bills and had no knowledge of the number of O'Carrigan's assets.

Barred from her husband's home office before his arrest, Mrs O'Carrigan has since been through his paperwork and found transaction histories that took her breath away.

"I had never seen so many noughts in all my life. Then they would disappear," she said.

Hidden in the study, which includes a pinball machine and jukebox, Mrs O'Carrigan also found receipts for a diamond necklace and silver earrings that were not hers.

Then this week four boxes of O'Carrigan's belongings arrived from his employer Leighton including statements from several linked credit cards she didn't know existed.

In the month before O'Carrigan's arrest, one card was used by a third party to withdraw thousands of dollars and pay for a gym membership, groceries and animal supplies.

On O'Carrigan's iPad, his wife found he was using the website sugardaddies.com which he said was just talk and a bit of fun.

"I said 'who else is there mate'? He said 'there's been a few'."

In a shockingly simple fraud, O'Carrigan apparently created fake invoices for Leighton from entity Acorn Cottage for services that were never provided.

Acorn Cottage was also the name of a Tasmanian farmhouse to which O'Carrigan and his wife planned to retire.

"Damian was going to leave Leighton and he was going to work down there with me," she said.

"We were going to grow herbs and our dogs were going to be raised in cold climates."

The move never happened, with O'Carrigan continuing the fraud despite stealing enough money to live the high life several times over.

O'Carrigan was a finance officer when the fraud started and progressed to finance and administration manager in 2006 with authority to approve payments of up to $5 million, signing off on his own faked invoices. He also used the money to help buy millions of dollars in properties and started breeding and training dozens of racehorses.

One horse has won more than $155,000 in prizemoney and another has won more than $35,000.

O'Carrigan did legal work in NSW before moving to Clermont in central Queensland to work with Leighton as a junior site clerk 30 years ago.

He worked from demountable bush buildings and lived in a caravan park with his wife and young daughter, their only child, before rising in the ranks.

"They used to say he had more orange blood (Leighton's corporate colour) than anyone," his wife said.

A justice of the peace, he rubbed shoulders with business and political chiefs in corporate boxes and at charity events.

He built a Harley Davidson from scratch and would go on charity motorbike runs to raise money for sick children and animals.

At the same time he was involved in relentless theft from his firm, signing off on almost 300 payments between May 2000 and October 2012.

In 2000, about the same time the fraud started, the O'Carrigans bought the acreage at Moggill and began building a new home.

O'Carrigan took his wife to Germany in the same year to buy german shepherds to bring home and breed.

When arrested, O'Carrigan owned in his name units at Auchenflower and Fortitude Valley.

Only O'Carrigan knows why he kept the fraud going for so long when he would likely never have been caught if he quit.

Leighton, which trades on the Australian Stock Exchange and is the world's largest contract miner, belatedly caught up with him when a cost-cutting team noticed unusual transactions last October.

When confronted by Leighton, O'Carrigan admitted to the fraud and was charged. In the quickest major criminal case legal observers can recall, he pleaded guilty in the District Court on November 23.

The fraud had been detected only weeks earlier and everyone, including his wife, was stunned at how swiftly it was all over.

"I had morning tea ready because I thought he was coming home on bail," she said.

"I am embarrassed, I am ashamed and I am disgusted. I am wearing the brunt of this.

"My husband has a roof over his head and he has three meals a day and he's not allowed to be upset by phone calls or harassed.

"Everyone thought because I'm Damian's wife that I was complicit in this and knew everything.

"I had to defend myself first against the general public, against solicitors and then against even my own family and friends.

"Damian is a very likeable man. There are a lot of people who still say it must be a mistake or a set-up. I have since learnt it is not a mistake."

The first she knew of the fraud allegations was when O'Carrigan came home on October 31, Halloween, and said he had been stood down.

He gave little away before seven police officers arrived at their Moggill home and arrested him.

Mrs O'Carrigan says her husband handled the finances and did not like to be questioned over how they were affording their lifestyle.

"I would say 'how are we doing' and he would say 'excellent'. I would always say let me know if there's a problem, if the horses are too much, if the bills are too much. You'd look at them and think that adds up to a bit of money. Then Damian would produce his bonus cheque of $25,000, his tax cheque of $37,000."

About three years ago her husband said he was earning $200,000 a year.

"For the hours, the time, the big company, the recognition, sitting in with board members, taking clients to different corporate boxes . . . no way in the world did it seem to me to be over the top."

david.murray@news.com.au

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