Johnny Bottles

This goes some way to explaining how the Rathkeale travellers can afford €185,000 cars. Johnny 'Bottles' Sheridan heads up up just one of about 20 crews doing tarmacadam scams all over Europe. The sales pitch starts with: "..we are working on a big motorway project and have some tarmacadam left over that's going to be dumped, but we can use it to surface your driveway for free..."

Read the full story in the Sunday World. If you have any problems playing the clip, it is also available on the Sunday World home page.

RATHKEALE travellers

The Rathkeale traveller-traders came home to County Limerick in fine style this Christmas. The tiny village was overwhelmed by the influx of expensive SUVs and luxury cars that made it look like the Old Trafford players' car park. We ran a story in the Sunday World about the cars and how some of the Rathkealers make their money. Read it here.

RATHKEALE and fraud

The County Limerick village of Rathkeale made headlines recently after the image of the Virgin Mary was seen in the stump of a felled tree. It is a bit of good news for the little village in rural Ireland which is also the spiritual home to some of Ireland's most prolific fraudsters. This time last year members of the 'Bishop' O'Brien clan from Rathkeale were selling dodgy generators all over Australia (read it here). Fair trade officials there called it one the biggest and well-organised scams of its type. Another of Rathkeale's traveller-trader sons in Michael 'Levan' Slattery who is the subject of legal action by an antiques dealer in Baltimore, Maryland. Read the full story here about 'Levan'. Apparently the far-flung Irish traveller-traders and the fraudsters amongst them are promising to make a pilgrimage back home.

PHONE prats

Direct marketing millionaires Gavin and Iain McConnon have been rubbing people up the wrong way in Australia. The 4 Wise Monkeys blogged about them here last month. A few years back they annoyed a bunch of people in Ireland by getting them to call premium rate phone numbers to collect an "overseas" parcel of rubbish. Read what I wrote back in April 2004.
Australia is very popular with the young Irish, but we could be in danger of wearing out our welcome. Last August a group of Irish traveller traders from Rathkeale made hundreds of thousands of Aussie bucks selling dodgy generators at vastly inflated prices. Members of the Bishop O'Brien clan sparked nationwide warnings from fair trading officials. Read all about it here.