He was fresh from St-Tropez where Erin, his classic century-old yacht, came fifth in its class in the Le Voile Saint- Tropez Classic Regatta, after the Royal Cork’s restored yacht Jap, which won.

When it was his turn to say a few words, he spoke with a slight French accent about the importance of preserving classic yachts for the next generation, according to report of the evening published on Royal Cork’s website. 

Then he announced that he was organising new sails for the Jap, eliciting “prolonged applause” from club members. He finished by presenting a half model of Erin to the admiral. 

On the other side of the village, Birles’s second yacht, a 1929 Ditchburn he had bought in Canada and renamed Fair Lady, lay at Castlepoint boatyard awaiting a refit for a new deck ahead of joining the Royal Cork’s classic fleet.   

He had also just bought — through one of his companies — an imposing period townhouse at 3 Strand Road, Youghal, further east from Crosshaven. It came with its own private slipway and water access. It had last been in use as a 17-bed hostel. Birles intended to restore it to its former glory.

Birles planned to commute between Ireland and Monaco where he was dating a successful businesswoman, Xin Sherry Zhao, owner of Asia Monaco Investments SARL, promoting Asian investment in Monaco and who had worked for the principality’s royal family.

The biggest client of his yacht management business was the fabulously famous and wealthy French actor, director and writer Dany Boon, who trusted him “completely” with the substantial sums he invested in Birles to run his own luxury yacht.

Young, handsome, cultured, passionate, Birles may have seemed one of the luckiest guys in the room at the Royal Cork on the night of November 18, 2021. But everything was not as it seemed when it came to the mysterious Terry Birles.

According to Boon, Birles was up to his neck in an alleged fraud.

Boon’s legal action against Birles exploded in the High Court in Dublin last July, alleging the actor had been conned out of €6m. He claimed Birles — who used the aliases of Sir Thierry Waterford-Mandeville and Thierry Fialek-Birles — invented fake investment opportunities in fake companies and even faked the aristocratic Irish heritage he traded off.

He allegedly posed as an Irish solicitor, perpetrated the fraud through Irish registered companies and spent Boon’s money on a property in Youghal, on the upkeep of his yachts and on his “lavish lifestyle”.

Birles has not contested the allegations.

Last month the High Court agreed Boon had indeed been “conned” and “defrauded” by the supposedly “fake” Irish aristocrat and awarded Boon €4.7m in damages. Birles’s prized boats and house in Youghal, impounded since last July, will now be sold.​

The elusive Birles has departed the scene as suddenly as he arrived, leaving behind a mess of conflicting narratives.

Where he comes from is a mystery. Investigators hired by Boon found he had addresses in Cap Martin and in Paris, a PO box in Guadeloupe, at a flat in St Kitts, and in Monaco.

Birles did not respond to emails or messages from the Sunday Independent.  But public records and court documents that chart part of his story point to a more bourgeois background. 

His fresh-faced image smiles out from the pages of the council magazine following the 2008 municipal elections in Le Chesnay Rocquencourt, a western suburb of Paris. Thierry Fialek-Birles was elected municipal councillor at the tender age of 20. 

In 2013, when he was in his mid-20s, company records listed Thierry Fialek-Birles as a director of the UK registered company Yacht Regatta Group Ltd, which he incorporated in 2013. The company didn’t seem to trade and was dissolved in 2016.

In 2017, a retired Frenchman called Andre Acke got chatting to Birles in a bar in Brussels. By this time, Boon’s lawyers alleged, Birles was calling himself Sir Thierry Waterford-Mandeville KLJ — with the “fictional narrative of a disqualified British aristocrat, a lawyer by training and engaged in rum-related activities in Belize and yachting in Jamaica.”

Acke told Birles, now almost 30, about his difficulties with the tax authorities. Birles gave him advice, helped him set up a company in the UK and organised health insurance for Acke and his partner. Acke claimed the health insurance never materialised and he also discovered Birles was using an alias. When Acke confronted Birles, he returned €20,000 he had given him.

Acke didn’t see Birles again until March 2019: “He looked physically worn out and admitted to me he had been in prison.”

“He wanted my assistance in purchasing a house in Normandy, France,” Acke alleged in an affidavit. He helped Birles buy a run-down house in Bully, a village in Normandy, and helped renovate it.

But it appeared Birles was eyeing Ireland. Although court records claim he is a French citizen, he had an Irish passport in the name of Thierry Birles that was issued 2018. Perhaps it was coincidence but in November 2020, a man called Thierry Fialek changed his name by deed poll on the Irish court register to Thierry Birles.

Birles registered at least three companies in Ireland at that time in the name of Thierry Birles including South Sea Merchant Mariners Partnership, the yacht management company that was at the centre of the alleged Boon fraud. The company had its own website, purporting to be a family business since 1922.

Peter Milley’s introduction to Terry Birles — as he more recently styled himself — came in the summer of 2019, through a boat he advertised for sale on his “boutique” yacht brokerage website. 

Milley, a sharp-eyed, retired environmental investigator/prosecutor and enthusiastic sailor who lives in Ontario, Canada, was impressed.

“He was very much a classic yacht and boat afficionado. He spoke very, very knowledgably about classic yachts and had an obvious passion for them,” he said. 

The boat was the Portia II, the Ditchburn that Birles later renamed Fair Lady, which Milley was selling for a friend.

Birles told him he was a maritime lawyer who came from an ancient aristocratic Irish family that had been involved in shipping and all things maritime for hundreds of years. 

The transaction was completed that summer. Milley was contractually prevented from saying how much Terry paid for Portia II but similar vessels on online yachting forums are for sale for six figures.

Money didn’t appear to be an object for Birles. The Portia II stayed in Ontario to be restored over the winter. Birles paid his bills on time and in full, always requesting the finest finish. They became friends over WhatsApp and the occasional video call, right through the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond.

While Milley was stuck at home, Birles seemed to travel the world, sending pictures and WhatsApps from Korea, Brussels, Monaco.

“He definitely had an appreciation for the finer things in life,” he said. Milley found him clever and knowledgeable. Whether Birles was talking about Ireland or yachts, he wasn’t “pulling it out of his ass”.​

Over time, fresh nuggets of his family history dropped into their chat: how his parents died in a helicopter crash in Connemara when he was nine and he had been raised by his grandfather in Cork. How he was educated in Britain and in Italy, had a degree from Oxford University and was articled with Lloyds of London.

Later, he sent Milley photos of a Rolls-Royce he said had belonged to his grandfather which he intended to drive from Ireland to Monaco. He also sent photographs of the house in Youghal, which he said had been in his family for years, and later invited Milley to use a house in Normandy he said had belonged to his mother.

“I had no reason to not believe his background,” Milley said — though some parts of Birles’s story were puzzling. For one thing, he had no online presence, unusual for a maritime lawyer: “But then I thought if he comes from a family that maybe has the wherewithal to not have an online presence, I guess I kind of wrote it off.” 

And with hindsight, he did think it strange at Birles never told him he was working for Dany Boon, the famous French film star.

Boon was introduced to Birles by the acclaimed French Olympic sailor Marc Pajot, one January day in 2021. After 20 years of renting boats every summer in Monaco, Boon decided it was time to own one. He needed someone to manage it. Pajot assured him Birles could be trusted.

Over the period from April to July, 2021, Boon said he transferred €6.7m to Birles and and South Seas Merchants Mariners.

He claimed he paid for non-existent insurance policies, organised by Birles, and transferred €4.5m to a Revolut account linked to the Birles company for a non-existent investment scheme [see panel]. After the transfer, Birles claimed he sold the company. When Boon looked for his €4.5m, the supposed “new owners” refused to give it back. 

But Birles hadn’t banked on Andre Acke. Birles had hired him to do admin for South Seas Merchant Mariners.

With access to the company’s email, Acke observed the alleged fraud unfolding from his Brussels apartment. On March 23 last year, Acke pressed send on an anonymous email that set in motion the unravelling of Terry Birles. 

His assets — the Erin, the Fair Lady and the Shamrock, now in Genoa, along with his house in Youghal — will be sold and bank accounts emptied following the judgment in Boon’s favour last month.

Boon’s lawyers suspected Birles had attempted to move his assets into a trust in Cooke Island and rumours swirled that the Erin was going to be sprung from the Royal Cork.

“Over the weekend there were strong rumours in the village of Crosshaven that an attempt will be made by unknown third parties to remove the boat from the jurisdiction,” said an email from the Royal Cork to Boon’s lawyers on October 3. “My client [the Royal Cork Yacht Club] believes these rumours to be true.”

The boat could “quite easily” be moved and be “outside of the jurisdiction in 90 minutes or so”, it said. The boat was moved to a secure yard.

The contractor hired to work on Birles’s house in Youghal downed tools the day it was impounded and is owed thousands of euros for work done.  “When the news broke everything stopped and we were caught in the middle,” said one builder who asked not to be named. Up to that point, money was no problem, he said.

For Xin Sherry Zhao, the businesswoman named in court records as Terry Birles’s girlfriend and whom friends say is another casualty of the alleged conman, the consequences are more far reaching. She had only been dating Birles for months. 

Zhao set up Asia Monaco Investments SARL in Monaco in 2017, long before she met Birles, and friends say he persuaded her to register the company in Ireland in June last year with Birles as company secretary. Both companies are now caught up in the legal wrangle, 

Her Monaco business is subject to a freezing order, denying her access to bank accounts and making business impossible.  Asia Monaco Investments, in Dublin and in Monaco are challenging the freezing orders and contesting the proceedings in full.​

Robert Quirke, an Irish businessman and chief executive of Roqu Group, believes she is a “victim” too. Quirke met  Zhao through her business in Monaco. When the trouble broke, she contacted him for help. 

“She was a woman in distress,” he said. Quirke advised her to get an Irish lawyer and then he helped her change the Dublin business address from the one Birles used to one he uses in Lusk. 

He met Birles once, when he had a coffee with Zhao in Dublin. He says he didn’t buy Birles’s aristocratic Irish heritage schtick. “He just seemed off, trying too hard to make an impression... He has a very thick French accent and came across as European. He was like a caricature of a Wall Street banker.” 

Milley last talked to Birles in November when he called him to wish him happy birthday: “I said I’ve been reading all these reports and of course he said ‘None of it’s true, I don’t know what’s going on.’ I just left it at that.”

Asked to describe the Birles he thought he knew, Milley said: “A gentleman, a lawyer, a very driven student of history and the classics, an afficionado of classic yachts and a world traveller. And a very thoughtful individual, with all the social graces. [He] sent me beautiful Christmas cards and Connemara scotch and my wife two bottles of wine at great expense…” 

Which goes some way towards explaining how Terry Birles persuaded rich, influential and glamorous people to let him in.

The WhatsApp files

High-profile French actor Dany Boon hired Terry Birles — an “Irish lord from an ancient family” and maritime lawyer — to manage his new yacht, Umaren, through his company, South Seas Merchant Mariners.
​
* June 21, 2021: Birles messages Boon about a fictitious “Irish Central Bank” deposit scheme that provided tax-free interest on a sum of €4.5m.
Birles: “It makes 3.24 per annum”
Boon: “I will wire an amount to go up to [€4.5m]”
Boon instructs his bank to transfer funds to a Revolut account linked to Birles’s company:
​
* July 26: Birles: “Dear Dany, I hope you are enjoying your time aboard Umaren. Just a quick note to confirm that we got the four, five m [sic]. It has been sent this afternoon to the bank so interest earning begins today. Cheers.”
​
* November, 2021: Birles tells Boon he sold South Seas to an Italian Rossi family but is staying on as an adviser.
Boon: “Hello Thierry. Oh my! Big news, big change. Okay. When it is gonna be official? I happy you will stay as a senior adviser.”
Boon asks Birles about getting his €4.5m back but still trusts him: “See you in Brussels for lunch on December 1. I want to invite you at Kamo. One of the best Japanese in town! You will love it. Cheers, Dany.”
​
* December 7: Birles says the Rossis fired him.
Birles: “That’s the first time I had this Donald Trump moment (you’ve been fired), although they were definitely nicer.”
Boon: “I need my money! I want you to fix that problem ASAP. I don’t understand what’s happening. Also, my captain, Maxime, did not receive the wire of €3,000 I have asked to you last week… This is a shitty situation you put me in. I need you to get things done. Please Thierry.”
Birles: “Hi Dany, I understand your frustration (they owe me some funds too) and I am sorry but this is of their own making. I sold to them, alright, and they are in charge. There is very little I can do except if you instruct me to begin legal proceedings against them.”