Kevin Halligen

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/907551/madeleine-mccann-Kevin-Halligen-private-investigator-death-ploys-revealed


Bizarre ploys of ‘detective’ Kevin Halligen who conned the McCanns REVEALED

THE extraordinary tactics of the bogus private investigator hired by the parents of Madeleine McCann to find their daughter can now be revealed. Kevin Halligen dreamt up bizarre undercover methods in his bid to catch the little girl’s kidnapper.


By JAMES MURRAY, EXCLUSIVE

PUBLISHED: 00:01, Sun, Jan 21, 2018


The Walter Mitty character, who was found dead earlier this month, was a heavy drinker, a liar and fantasist who persuaded Kate and Gerry McCann to part with £300,000 from the Madeleine Fund after visiting them at their home in Rothley, Leicestershire.

Part of the reason the McCanns were persuaded by him was because he took along Henry Exton, who had run brilliant surveillance operations at M15 and has an impeccable reputation.

But Mr Exton was also duped by Halligen.

Madeleine vanished on May 3, 2007, and Halligen offered the desperate couple the services of his firm, Oakley International, a year later.

The deal was for the so-called Operation Omega where Mr Exton ran an undercover team in Praia da Luz on the Algarve.

It was where the McCanns’ friend Jane Tanner had seen a man carrying a child from the couple’s apartment.

Halligen went on to recruit a couple with a young daughter to walk around Luz to try to flush out the kidnapper.

Richard Parton, a security expert in Washington, was appalled by the ploy.

Speaking in a documentary, The Conman And The McCanns, he said: “He got a couple to go on holiday with a child who looks a lot like Madeleine.

“Apparently, she was to have been used as bait.”

An appeal for witnesses produced a London City worker who confirmed a description from Jane Tanner.

He helped produce an image of the suspect.

But one man was trailed for weeks, despite the witness saying he didn’t look like the suspect.

Halligen was also supposed to be using top Washington security contacts to secure military satellite images showing who had entered the apartment.

No such images exist and Halligen produced Google Earth photographs.

An unimpressed Mr Exton was by now £100,000 out of pocket, with Halligen’s cheques bouncing.

In 2012 Halligen was extradited from Britain to America where he admitted conning millions of pounds from a company whose executives had been kidnapped in Africa and was jailed.

Mr Exton says he regrets working with Halligen but defends the work done in Portugal.

“The distraction of Halligen’s behaviour undermined the very good work that was done,” he said.

One key part of that work was getting e-fit images of a man seen carrying Madeleine towards the beach, pictures Scotland Yard later publicised.

Maker of the documentary, Adrian Gatton, said he saw Halligen in 2017, “somewhat the worse for wear”.

He wrote on Twitter: “He was recovering from a car crash, an accident he claimed was an attempted ‘hit’.

“In 2016 he told me he had been poisoned.”

Surrey Police are preparing a report for the coroner on Dublin-born Halligen’s death on January 8 at the home of his girlfriend near Guildford.

They say his death is “unexplained”.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5414808/madeleine-mccann-detective-accused-of-fleecing-hunt-cash-died-of-brain-haemorrhage/

A PRIVATE detective accused of using cash raised in the hunt for Madeleine McCann to fund his lavish lifestyle died of a brain haemorrhage, an inquest heard.