Serial fraudster on the run from UK authorities is arrested in Dublin

Gardaí have arrested a notorious fraudster who had fled to Ireland while on the run amid a trial in London in which she was convicted and sentenced in her absence.

Farah Damji (53), also known as Farah Dan, was born in Uganda and is the daughter of South African-born millionaire property tycoon Amir Damji. She has a long and storied criminal career stretching back to the early 1990s, when she ran an art gallery in New York and East Hampton.

She was convicted in February on two counts of breaching a restraining order, in April and June 2018. However, she had absconded during that trial and came to Ireland, where she has been at large ever since.

Following her conviction in her absence, she was sentenced in March to 27 months in jail and a European Arrest Warrant was issued for her by Judge Michael Gledhill at Southwark Crown Court.

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Her conviction related to her continued harassment of a police officer she was banned from naming in any correspondence under a restraining order. She broke that restraining order by writing to the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements, which manages some criminal offenders in the UK, and claiming the police officer she was not permitted to name anywhere had scared her mother and had also stalked her.

The Garda National Economic Crime Bureau unearthed information about two months ago suggesting Damji was in Dublin and began an investigation into her with a view to locating her.

On Monday a search was carried out at a block of apartments in Dublin’s north inner city, close to Bachelor’s Walk, where she was located and arrested.

Members of the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau also found false IDs they believe she had been using in Dublin, where she has presented herself as an Icelandic national.

A credit card in the same name as the false IDs was also recovered by gardaí, as well as two laptops that were seized for examination. Damji was taken before the High Court in Dublin on Monday afternoon, where she was remanded in custody to the Dóchas Centre, the women's prison on the Mountjoy campus on Dublin's North Circular Road.

Gardaí also informed the authorities in Britain of her arrest, and she was set to be extradited to serve her sentence there.

Stalking conviction

In 2016 she was jailed in Britain for five years for stalking a church warden she had met through online dating. While in prison she raised £5,000, through an appeal on Twitter, to pay for a barrister so she could appeal her conviction.

As well as the police officer she was banned from mentioning in any comments, Damji is also prohibited from naming in comments other individuals, including people who have investigated her, but has ignored those orders and published comments described as character assassinations.

As well as having stalking-related convictions and convictions for breaking restraining orders, she also has a number of convictions relating to cheque fraud and taking other people’s credit cards and running up large bills.

She has also used forged documents to present herself as a judge and a member of the Crown Prosecution Service – Britain’s DPP – in a bid to ensure witnesses did not turn up in court or to have possessions of hers returned to her after they had been seized as part of investigations into her frauds.