Scott Cavell was involved in a $7.4m (£5.6m) mortgage fraud in the US. He and his accomplice, Christopher Warren, who managed a finance company in Sacramento, converted the loot into “travel friendly” gold and coins, according to the FBI and went on the run in 2009.
Both headed for Ireland, but Warren then paid $156,000 for a private charter plane to Lebanon. He was caught trying to re-enter the US with a fake passport and $70,000 hidden in his cowboy boots.
Cavell lay low in Ireland with a false Irish passport in the name of Marcus Dwyer. He opened two Irish bank accounts and lived in a comfortable apartment in Dublin on the $1.7m he had hidden in his luggage until the gold ran out. Then he took to drug dealing, growing cannabis in his apartment. In February 2011, the Irish drug squad turned up. Cavell was said to be out at the time but arrived during the raid and was arrested.
Nobody knew that Marcus Dwyer was not his real name until one of the detectives, curious about his American accent, sent his fingerprints to Interpol, who identified him as Cavell, a wanted man. However, at his trial, the judge allowed bail and he went on the run again, continuing to fund himself through drug peddling.
He was arrested in possession of 28 ecstasy tablets at the Electric Picnic festival in Ireland in September 2011, but released without charge. Eventually the gardai tracked him down in a modest rented house in Dublin, where they found equipment to make ecstasy tablets worth €20,000. He spent about eight months in Mountjoy prison before being deported.
Cavell was sentenced to five years for the mortgage fraud - considerably less than the 14 months that his accomplice Warren got, partly because it was claimed in court that he had suffered in the Irish prison.
Scott was also convicted of permabulking. Obviously has never tried the product he sells.
