Brothers Patrick and Matthew McDonagh stood on David’s front stoop, saying they were rustling up fix-it work in the area and noticed David’s roof had a hole in it. David, an 80-year-old retired Boeing electrician living alone, invited the pair into his tiny dining room. He’s a friendly nondenominational Christian guy, the type to think the best of everyone he meets. (David and the Department of Justice asked that his last name not be used in this story for his protection.)
Patrick, 35, did almost all the talking — loud, with a husky voice. Matthew, 34, mostly stood silent in the background. Loud, chummy, Patrick said the brothers were experienced structural engineers. Before David could respond, the brother went out to their pickup truck, grabbed a ladder and climbed up to the roof. They brought down a broken shingle and showed it to David. It was later that he found out that the broken shingle was a fake the McDonaghs brought with them.
The conmen first knocked on David's door claiming that they had been working on a neighbor's house and noticed his roof (left) had holes requiring immediate repair. The roof had been replaced a couple years earlier and did not need any repairs, but David gave the men money to start the work. They didn't do any repairs on the roof, but convinced David that other work needed to be done. The brothers eventually did some work on the house, including some repairs to woodpecker holes on the exterior (right), but it was done so poorly that it all needs to be redone. (M. Scott Brauer / Cascade PBS)
David knew his house leaked. Later that day, the pair walked around the house, which his ex-wife’s father had built, and found cracks in the foundation. David couldn’t see them, but the McDonaghs said they were there. Most foundations have small cracks in them, an FBI agent said later.
“I didn’t have the sense to ask ‘Who are you?’ Why I didn’t speak up, I can’t tell you,” David recalled.
His first check to the McDonaghs: $15,000.
The McDonaghs asked for checks in advance to cover expenses. He wrote them. The pair, along with a couple guys whom he suspected were day laborers hired at a shopping center parking lot, began digging in the back of David’s house.
For months, the brothers kept coming back for check after check after check, for a total of $235,000.
A cement front walk was expanded without David’s consent. A trench was dug around much of the house to convince David that they were working on the foundation. A couple of teen boys filled in woodpecker holes on the outdoor walls with spackle. The brown exterior now looks pockmarked with a white rash of measles. David was convinced to pay $200,000 for materials from the East Coast which never arrived.
Matthew, the relatively silent brother, supervised David writing his checks and talked him through wiring the money to a bank in New York. David kept asking the pair for paperwork about the work, supplies and invoices. The paperwork will come soon, they always said. It never did.
Ultimately David paid the brothers $435,000 — half of his life savings.
David never felt threatened, just pressured. He fretted that if he did not keep paying, the brothers would abandon the fix-it work before it would be completed.
“I feel stupid. I was told they knew how to manipulate people,” he said.
“Both Matthew and Patrick are cheery, charming … They would quickly put victims at ease. There’s a shame element to it,’ said Ethan Via, a Seattle-based veteran FBI agent specializing in financial crimes such as embezzlement, fraud and white-collar crime who worked on this case.
The McDonaghs had already mapped a path nationwide, bringing them to the attention of the FBI and the CBP.
The conmen did some work on David's house, but it was so poorly done that it needs to be replaced after less than a year and a half. The concrete for David's porch, for instance, was poured in heavy rain, which caused premature deterioration of the steps. (M. Scott Brauer / Cascade PBS)
They are allegedly part of what the federal Homeland Security Investigations bureau has identified as the “Traveling Conmen Fraud Group.” Members of this organized crime group come from Ireland and the United Kingdom and engage in fraud through paving, roofing and home improvement scams, defrauding primarily elderly victims by taking money for services which are never provided or completing work to a substandard level, often causing unwitting victims larger expenses than having the work done correctly by a licensed contractor would have cost.
Journalist and author Eamon Dillon recently told an Irish true-crime podcast host that people in this transnational organized crime group help each other financially to get set up in the United States and other countries, and they trade contacts to establish their schemes.
The McDonagh brothers illegally entered New York from Canada in 2022. They came to the United States with their families from County Fermanagh in southwestern Northern Ireland, living in their recreational vehicles and sometimes in cheap motels, Via said.
According to court documents, there are at least four other victims of the McDonaghs.
One lives in Illinois, where he or she paid Matthew and other “known and unknown” people $75,000 to repave a driveway and build a retaining wall. The work was poorly done and damaged the victim’s home. The value of the work was significantly less than $75,000.
Three other victims live in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon — one couple and one individual. Patrick McDonough falsely told the couple that he worked with a legitimate construction company. He charged the couple $22,500 for foundation repair and did not finish the job. Patrick McDonagh falsely told a third individual that he worked for the same legitimate construction company. He and others charged that person for $29,000 for mostly unnecessary work on the house’s foundation. The actual value of that work was less than $2,000.
In January 2024, the McDonagh brothers hit David up for another $19,000 for “taxes.”
Taxes?
That made no sense to David. He phoned his daughter Rebecca about the request. And for the first time, he told her about all the other checks.
“I lost it. I put the phone on mute. Then I lost it,” she recalled.
David's daughter Rebecca (last names withheld) learned about how much David had paid to the conmen starting in 2023 and began asking questions and gathering information about them. This led to an FBI investigation and the men's eventual convictions in 2024 after they pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The brothers are now serving 18-month prison sentences and David has received about half of his money back. (M. Scott Brauer / Cascade PBS)
She took her dad to the bank and stopped the wiring of that latest check. Rebecca then called 911, and ended up talking to the Shoreline police department. The McDonaghs began calling David three to five times a day to get that last check. As the days passed, Rebecca talked with a couple cops in her Bible study group who told her that police work harder when faced with a “squeaky wheel.”
The FBI and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol declined to discuss how they tracked down the McDonaghs, saying that would reveal sensitive information. The CBP arrested the pair in June without incident outside a hotel in Marysville and charged them with Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud.
In December the pair pleaded guilty to the fraud charge with the stipulation that they would pay at least $1.2 million in restitution to David and four other victims of their con schemes in the United States. The standard range of sentencing for this type of crime is 33 to 41 months. During the sentencing hearing, David and Rebecca requested the maximum possible sentence of 20 years. U.S. assistant attorney general Lauren Staniar requested a two-year sentence for each.
Matthew McDonagh’s lawyer Ralph Hurvitz and Patrick McDonagh’s attorney Colleen Fitzharris argued at the hearing that the brothers had had troubled childhoods and home lives, with a father who died in prison, as well as bombings and violence as a regular part of their lives near the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland. They were raised in an environment of poverty, abuse and violence, the lawyers argued.
David and Rebecca didn’t buy the excuses.
“They took advantage of my trust when they came to my door,” David told the judge. “They really pressured me to write check after check after check. … I now find it hard to trust others. These men were relentless and ruthless in pursuit of my hard-earned money,” David said.
“They are calculating habitual criminals. A lighter sentence does nothing to deter them,” Rebecca told the judge.
Both McDonaghs briefly apologized in court to David. “I sincerely apologize. I intend to pay [restitution],” Matthew McDonagh said.
Patrick echoed those words. “I apologize,” he said in court.
Staniar said the pair paid most of their ill-gotten gains to the higher-ups in their criminal organization, and kept only a fraction for themselves. Via said the FBI does not have information on who else the McDonagh brothers might have been working for. So far, David has only been able to recover about half of his lost funds after a $200,000 wire transfer was reversed.
Judge John H. Chun from the Western District of Washington said he took into consideration the pair’s hard and impoverished backgrounds, plus their nonviolent nature and familial obligations, before sentencing them to 18 months with credit for time already served — as well as the order to pay restitution.
The federal prosecutor, David and Rebecca all doubted that any restitution will actually be paid because the McDonaghs will be deported back to their home country at the end of their sentences, and it will be almost impossible to collect restitution from convicts located outside the United States. Even defense attorney Ralph Hurvitz acknowledged: “I don’t know how restitution would be collected.”
“It’s a slap on the wrist,” David said. “Very disappointing,” Rebecca added.
After sentencing, David speculated the light sentences were due to both brothers having spouses and families. His daughter said: “They should have thought about that before they started this life.”
David did get a last word in. He has a sign on his front door that says “The last solicitor who came here ended up in federal prison (not joking).”
David paid the conmen approximately $435,000 over a few months for work including these partially patched woodpecker holes and a few splotches of paint on the exterior. After an FBI investigation and the McDonagh brothers' convictions, David received $200,000 of his money back. (M. Scott Brauer / Cascade PBS)
