Carey made up “a story” that he needed money for treatment in the US and tricked friends including billionaire businessman Denis O’Brien, who said he was “completely duped” into giving him more than €130,000.

The ex Kilkenny player maintained he was in a “desperate” financial situation due to bank debts when he carried out the fraud. He made fake hospital letters, showed victims scars on his head and lied that he could pay them back from a payout from a supposed medical negligence claim.

Saying he thought jail was “inevitable”, Judge Martin Nolan remanded Carey in custody to Monday when he will pass sentence.

He said Carey’s victims should not feel foolish for trying to help him as they were “genuinely good people” who had responded generously in what they thought was Carey’s “hour of need.”

Carey admitted 10 counts of dishonestly by deception inducing 13 victims to make monetary payment to him after he fraudulently claimed to have cancer and needed finances to obtain treatment, between 2014 and 2022.

The named victims were Owen and Ann Conway, Mark and Sharon Kelly, Denis O’Brien, Aidan Mulligan, Tony Griffin and Christy Browne, Thomas Butler, Jeffrey Howes, Noel Tynan, Aonghus Leydon and Edwin Carey.

Some eight other similar charges and two of using a false instrument – hospital letters – are to be taken into consideration.

Carey (54) had been due to stand trial in July but entered guilty pleas and a sentence hearing took place at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court today.

Detective Sergeant Mick Bourke told prosecutor Dominic McGinn SC the investigation began in 2022 after an alert from a financial institution where a customer who was “getting on in years” wished to transfer a large sum of money to Carey.

This raised “a flag” and after this, another victim contacted gardaí to say they believed they had been deceived by Carey and handed money to him on the understanding that he needed medical treatment which “may not have been true.”

Gardaí obtained financial records showing a series of deceptions by the accused. There were more than 20 victims.

In Mr O’Brien’s case, the court heard they met on a golfing trip to South Africa in 1997 and became friends.

Carey first approached him in 2014 about needing to go to Seattle for cancer treatment. He told Mr O’Brien he had won a national handball contest in the US, was classed as an elite athlete and his treatment was paid for but he needed travel expenses.

Mr O’Brien agreed to pay his costs as well as providing accommodation and a car for Carey while he was in Dublin.

The businessman’s accountant asked for doctor’s letters about his medical condition and Carey provided letters purporting to be from a hospital in Seattle “to sustain the fraud.”

In 2017, Mr O’Brien agreed to pay a €60,000 outstanding AIB loan for Carey.

Carey maintained he was due a substantial payout from the HSE and Mr O’Brien gave him a total of €125,182 along with $13,000. None was repaid.

Brid Mulligan was president of the handball association and Carey was involved in a fundraiser she had organised following the Omagh bombing in 1998.

After she died, Carey contacted her husband Aidan to offer his condolences before also telling him he needed money for treatment. Mr Mulligan transferred €8,500 into his account in June and September, 2022.

Thomas Butler, a financial controller, got to know Carey through work and golf.

After telling him his story, Carey said he barely had enough money for petrol and Mr Butler gave him all the cash he had in his pocket – €860. He eventually gave Carey a total of €16,360.

The accused took €5,000 from his own distant cousin Edwin Carey, who said he was “happy to help” as he believed he could help save his life.

Carey got €4,000 from Margaret Kirwan, who was a cancer patient and her husband Ger after he claimed he had the same type of cancer – this was eventually repaid.

The total amount given to Carey was €394,127 and $13,000. Some victims were repaid, totalling €44,203 but most got no money back, with €349,927 outstanding.

Carey had no previous convictions.

In December 2022, gardaí went to the hotel he was staying in in Kilkenny and said they wanted to speak to him “about irregularities with his finances”.

He invited them into his room and handed over his phone and car keys. Gardaí downloaded Carey’s text conversations with the victims, where he asked for financial assistance, referring to multiple myeloma and having to travel to Seattle.

There were “numerous excuses to victims for non re-payment” of the money, often saying he was in the US getting treatment, or blaming the banks for payments not going through.

Gardaí also found a letter purporting to be from a hospital in Seattle, but enquiries there showed they “didn’t have any record of a patient called Denis or DJ Carey and he had never been treated there.”

Carey went to Waterford garda station by arrangement and said he had “made up a story that he was sick with cancer” to “buy himself some time” to pay a “substantial debt” for bank loans from AIB.

“I did get some money under false pretences,” Carey told gardaí. “I want to apologise for where I’m at, I’d love the opportunity to sort things out.”

Carey had not been in the US since 2015, had never been treated for cancer and there was no medical negligence claim.

In a victim impact statement read out to the court, Mr O’Brien said “when someone comes to you telling you they are seriously ill with cancer and asking you to help, you do not question their bona fides.”

To falsely claim to have cancer was “unconscionable” and to claim you needed financial help for treatment was “extraordinarily manipulative, deceitful and cunning”, he said.

“I believed him,” Mr O’Brien’s statement continued. “It was not a case of a once-off donation, DJ Carey came back to me time and time again over a long number of years seeking financial help. He completely took advantage of my friendship.”

“I have never been defrauded by anybody. To my embarrassment, I was completely duped by DJ Carey,” the statement concluded.

Mr Butler read out his own statement.

“The fact that DJ used cancer as a means to obtain money under a false pretense was gut wrenching personally for me as both my parents died of cancer,” he said. “I was also a volunteer driver for the Irish Cancer Society and there he was obtaining money by lying that he needed finance to obtain life saving cancer treatment.

“As I am regarded as a very generous individual, DJ took advantage of this by his lies.”

Sgt Bourke agreed with Colman Cody SC, defending, that Carey had been fully cooperative and made admissions. He had told gardaí he got into financial difficulties and referred to personal and relationship problems and the repossession of a home he formerly lived in.

Carey, who had worked in sales, said he had “got into a rut” and he “should have sought some help but I didn’t.”

He said he would have “lost everything from his house to his car” and was in a “desperate situation.” He told gardaí he had been treated for pericarditis, a viral condition affecting the heart wall and also had a heart condition that previously required surgery, but admitted he was in good health and had never got treatment abroad.

Mr Cody said Carey was a “person of a certain reputation” for excellence in sport and had experienced “humiliation and ridicule” as a result of the case.

“There are certain online images of him purporting to show him in a hospital bed hooked up to a mobile phone,” Mr Cody said. “They were images circulated online as a way of deriding Mr Carey, they didn’t emanate from the investigation. They are completely fake and false.”

Mr Cody said Carey had suffered “what can only be described as a stunning fall from grace” for someone whose “name was synonymous with elite skill and sportsmanship.”

The “affection, esteem and respect” in which he had been held was now “all replaced by notoriety, shame, ridicule and derision.” He had had a meteoric rise and his descent into shame had been equally meteoric, Mr Cody said.

Carey had moved from a position of security to one where he was of no fixed abode and resorted to sleeping in his car.

“He is in effect something of a pariah,” the barrister continued.

There was no immediate prospect of restitution given Carey’s “straitened” financial circumstances, but he offered a “heartfelt and sincere apology” to each victim.

Some were personally known to him while others agreed to help as a result of his “reputation and status as a sportsman,” which he “parlayed into deception and fraud.”

Carey accepted he was facing imprisonment and had already suffered as a result of the “ignominy and derision.” Asking for leniency, Mr Cody said his client had met the case in an “honourable fashion.”

“He transcended sport, even people with a passing interest in sport and the GAA knew who DJ Carey was… all that respect and esteem is now gone, he has brought that by his own actions and he has to pay for it,” he said.

“All the injured parties are to be complemented, they may feel foolish and taken advantage of but they were genuinely good people, good souls who responded to Mr Carey in a generous way in what they thought was his hour of need,” Judge Nolan said.

He remanded Carey in custody pending sentencing.