Tom Donnelly
Appearances
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
And this trail of clues would eventually lead them to a physical therapy clinic outside of Providence. And that clinic, it belonged to Sam. Sam was Sarah's physical therapist. They'd become friends, and then much more than that. Sarah had become a fixture in Sam's life. She'd even helped out when Sam's mom was ill.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
Donnelly, along with a few other federal agents, just showed up at Sam's PT clinic one day with a subpoena and some questions.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
The feds start talking about Sam's mom, asked if she was in treatment for cancer.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
So there's Sam, in the car, in the parking lot at her work, cramped between a bunch of federal agents, wondering what all this could possibly have to do with her mom. That's when investigators asked her.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
Just a few weeks earlier, Sam had learned that Sarah had been lying to her for years about nearly everything. But this was different. These documents from Hunter 7, they would be key to Donnelly's investigation. Because even before he sat down with Justin and Sam, they gave him ample evidence of a crime. Those documents would allow him to do something really crucial.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
Get a warrant to search Sarah's house. We'll be right back. Early on the morning of February 3rd, 2022, search warrant in hand, Donnelly set out for Sarah's house.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
Donnelly had a couple of his own agents with him, a couple agents from the FBI.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
Sarah had slipped out of the house without anyone knowing. Donnelly's not quite sure how.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
So Donnelly tells her, look, you can't be in the house while we search. You can go wait at a friend's or get a coffee at Dunkin', but you can't go in the house. Sarah decides to wait outside.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
We got footage of the search through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
But way before she got busy on the buttocks beat, Kate had served in the military.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
And Donnelly found other clues for the character Sarah had been playing. Other props for her double life. Her backstopped identity. Sarah the Marine. Sarah the Hero. Like a handmade vase with the Marine Corps insignia. He later discovered Sarah had made it as part of an art therapy trip for veterans. As Sarah waited, her mind went to dark places.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
Sarah was taken to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. Meanwhile, Donnelly dove into the mountain of evidence. The scope of Sarah Kavanaugh's fraud was beyond what he could have imagined. Over six years, Sarah defrauded ten different veterans' charities. Ten. She also stole federal benefits, accepted donations from GoFundMe,
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
and exploited five individuals, including Justin, her gym buddy Michelle, Sam, and Sam's mother. All told, she stole over a quarter of a million dollars of cash and services. And that's just the wire fraud total, which doesn't even count the donations she took from friends in cash over the years. All of this while working as a licensed social worker at the VA.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
The feds would spend the next few months building their case against Sarah Kavanaugh.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
Our show is edited by Karen Shakerji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Mastering by Jake Gorski.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
Special thanks to Sarah Nix, Izzy Carter, Daphne Chen, Jake Flanagan, and Greta Cohn. Additional thanks to Vicki Merrick. I'm Jess McHugh.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
All told, Kate served about five years, including two tours in Afghanistan. After getting out, she found her way into podcasting at Barstool Sports. She hosted that show called Zero Blog 30, all about life in the military.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
You might remember Sarah's friend Dex had actually submitted Sarah to Hunter 7 to get help paying her medical bills. In this Hunter 7 connection, this is how Kate first learns about Sarah's story.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
The post also mentioned that Sarah's CT scan showed metallic particles in her lungs, something often linked to IED blasts.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
That's when Kate learned that all of those details about Sarah's medical condition, like the five centimeter long nodule in her lungs, appeared to be made up or stolen. And that Sarah wasn't who she claimed to be.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
Kate goes on like this, venting about the mess Sarah's caused. She says that this whole scandal will only scare people away from donating to veterans' charities, leaving less help for those who really need it. She told her co-hosts this would just make it way harder for real women combat vets to get the respect they deserve, which really pissed Kate off.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
The one that Hunter7 shared about Sarah Kavanaugh. This is the post that Kate saw. The one that brought her to tears. This post had all the details of Sarah's supposed injuries and a photo of her in her uniform. Well, a lot of people saw and shared this post. And as it made the rounds, people started commenting, saying something looked off about her uniform.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
For one thing, she was wearing out-of-regulation earrings. And also, upon closer inspection, it looked like her eagle, globe, and anchor insignia were backwards. The folks at Hunter 7 started getting suspicious. So they called the VA to verify Sarah's service record. The folks at the VA do a quick check in their database. Sarah's not in it. At least, not as a veteran.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
And this hot mess, it all lands on the desk of a guy named Tom Donnelly.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
That's Donnelly. He's an investigator with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Basically, he's an in-house detective for the VA's Office of Inspector General, looking into fraud and other sketchy business. Which is why he was the one to get this call about Sarah Kavanaugh, a VA social worker who had apparently gone rogue.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
If there was one single person who really put Sarah on the map in a very public way, well, it'd be this woman right here.
Deep Cover
Episode 4: The Suspect
One of the other documents that Donnelly had gotten from Hunter 7 was a set of medical bills. These bills were from Dana-Farber, a cancer hospital in Boston. The bills looked real. So if they weren't Sarah's, whose were they? Donnelly and his colleagues slowly pieced together where the bills had come from.