One-week delay for heiress's €3m fraud action

on 09/01/2013 00:00:00

Elisa Rodino claims Thomas J Queally, who had been engaged to her, has stolen about $4m (€3m) of her money - a large portion of which was lodged by him into a bank in Ennis, Co Clare.

She claims Mr Queally, whom she has not seen for months, had been living a double life and had another fiancée while engaged to her. Mr Queally denies the claims, and says that while he was in a relationship with her, he was never her fiancée.

He claims her allegations that he transferred money to Ireland from a joint bank account in the US to his bank account in Ireland without her authorisation were simply untrue.

Last month, Ms Rodino's lawyers secured a number of temporary freezing orders against Mr Queally, of Sherman Avenue, Yonkers, New York, and who is originally from Lahaknock, Kilmaley, Co Clare.

They prevent him reducing, dissipating, or transferring funds below a value of €1.6m held in a bank account at Permanent TSB in Ennis.

Ms Rodino, of Cathedral Avenue, Hempstead, New York, claims the money in the Ennis bank account, about $2m, belongs to her. She claims it was moved by Mr Queally from a US account held in both their names.

When the matter returned before Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy yesterday, the parties agreed the case should be further adjourned to next Tuesday.

The adjournment is to allow for a further exchange of affidavits between the sides.

Lawyers for Ms Rodino want the case to be heard as soon as possible. However, Mr Queally's lawyers intend to bring a motion to have the freezing order against their client's bank account struck out.

Mr Justice McCarthy agreed to put the matter back to next week when the new legal term resumes. The freezing order will remain in place until then.

Ms Rodino's Irish lawyers secured orders against Mr Queally shortly before Christmas. They told the court she was a vulnerable woman taken advantage of by Mr Queally, whom she met in 2007.

She claims that last August, in order to aid Mr Queally in a court case against a former employer, she agreed to put his name down on one of her bank accounts. It was a deposit account containing $5m.

She claims Mr Queally asked her to do this because it would show he and Ms Rodino, who had inherited a sizeable property portfolio from her father, were a couple and that the work he did on her properties was not a contract of employment.

Last October, she claims Mr Queally was due to meet up with her in Spain but never showed up. When she arrived back in the US she discovered that money had been transferred to the bank in Ennis and to a US bank account, and that he did not return her calls.

She has also brought a legal action against him in New York, where she alleges that Mr Queally misappropriated property as well as cash from her. Mr Queally denies all the allegations of wrongdoing made against him in both the Irish and the New York courts.