Convicted fraudster Samantha Cookes ‘owes €3,000’ in rent to Kerry landlord

Tim Hourigan rented out his property in Kenmare, Co Kerry, last March to an “angel” whom he believed to be a woman called Jade Williams.

The tenant was in fact Cookes, a fraudster who has been before the courts twice and who has moved between a number of Irish towns using different aliases for years.

Mr Hourigan is being taken through a mediation process by the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) by Cookes, despite the fact she is doing so under a false name.

Cookes, who has claimed to have Huntington’s disease, complained to the RTB that Mr Hourigan has discriminated against her on grounds of her disability and that he refused to accept Housing Assistance Payment (HAP).

Mr Hourigan told the Sunday World that this was false, that he was strongly in favour of HAP and that Cookes had left the property without notice.

Despite this, the RTB has scheduled a “mediation” between Mr Hourigan and the fraudster, who filed her complaint under the name Jade Williams, for February 7.

The RTB has said it cannot comment on individual cases.

Mr Hourigan said he had tried to show the RTB that Cookes was a convicted fraudster. In his application for a dispute resolution, he wrote: “This tenant deceived me and her neighbours on numerous occasions about her identity and the neighbours are now afraid… The tenant has given me a false name and is using several different names…

“Please google Carrie Jade Williams, Jade Williams, Samantha Cookes (her real name), Lucy Harte and Rebecca Fitzgerald. You will find some interesting information about this tenant.”

The neighbours are in fear as a result of what they are reading online about this woman

All of the names cited are aliases that Cookes used while posing variously as a disability rights activist and writer, an occupational therapist, an au pair and a millionaire domestic abuse campaigner.

Mr Hourigan learned late last year that Cookes had been subletting a room in his apartment on Airbnb without his permission. Cookes would then later go viral for claiming, using the false identity Carrie Jade Williams, that some of her Airbnb guests were suing her for “being disabled”.

Mr Hourigan told the RTB that Cookes’s decision to rent out the property was done without his permission, and that it has now had an effect on his insurance on the property.

He also said that expensive furniture had gone missing from the property.

“Tenant has not paid rent and is in arrears of €3,000. I cannot afford to have this drag on as this tenant does not want to pay any rent and I have obligations to keep my mortgage repayments up to date,” Mr Hourigan told the RTB.

He added that since Cookes was revealed as a fraudster in the press, there has been major anxiety among some of her former Kenmare neighbours.

“The neighbours are in fear as a result of what they are reading online about this woman,” Mr Hourigan said, adding that one neighbour has removed their small children and sent them to stay with another family member.

Cookes did not respond to requests for comment.