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Wigs, costumes, disguises, counterfeit driver’s licenses and passports were put into play by two former lawyers in a specific campaign to defraud banks and credit unions out of almost 400,000 euros.
The sentencing judge had special criticism for one of the banks defrauded by the couple, AIB.
Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin heard all the facts of the case involving Keith O’Flynn, 46, and Lyndsey Clarke, 37, of Blarney Street, Cork, and postponed the sentence until Friday in Criminal Court of the Cork Circuit.
Almost 100,000 euros in cash was recovered in the garda investigation, as the judge asked why something should be returned to AIB, in particular, rather than giving its compensation distribution to charity.
“AIB never missed it. We could give money to the AIB to charity. They did not know what they were giving away, they did not miss it. If they want to get it back, they must go to court (Friday). At some point, AIB will have to stop losing money.
“We are used to financial institutions making honest efforts to fail. AIB did it on three separate occasions. It is not something to be surprised by … We, the people of Ireland, have no reason to believe that the AIB will ever prevail because we will bail them out. The story speaks for itself, ”said judge Ó Donnabháin.
Garda Detective Alan McCarthy testified that both defendants were practicing attorneys, but were suspended in December 2016 for unrelated matters and Keith O’Flynn was declared bankrupt the following year.
It was after that that the couple established 60 false identities or aliases by creating false documents. Initially, they bought counterfeit driver’s licenses from an online site called Flawless Fake IDs. They also secured utility bills with fake IDs.
“They created eight different PPS numbers. They asked bad sleepers for their PPS numbers, ”said Det. Garda McCarthy said. The detective said that the quality of the forged documents they used was very high.
The lead attorney for the prosecution, Siobhán Lankford, said: “This couple was operating an identity factory.”
Using all these false documents, they opened 80 bank accounts for people who did not exist. Then they would apply for loans. For a short time they made refunds but then stopped paying. They obtained loans for a total of € 469,000, causing a loss to entities of more than € 390,000.
Some of it was done online and over the phone, and when they needed to go to banks or ATMs they wore wigs and costumes.
They caused losses as follows: € 49,000 for Bank of Ireland, € 154,000 for AIB, € 31,000 for Ulster Bank and € 156,000 for various credit unions. The couple also established fake accounts with PTSB, KBC and An Post, but those institutions did not grant them loans. Most of the scams were carried out in the cities of Cork and Dublin.
Det. Garda McCarthy attributed the termination of the case to Alan Boland of the Bank of Ireland’s group financial crimes unit, who began to see a pattern on several of the accounts and listened to the voice recordings and verified the computer data. “Without this work, the other financial institutions would not have realized that they were victims of this crime,” Det said. Garda McCarthy said.
Alice Fawsett, Lead Counsel, and Seamus Roche SC of Clarke and O’Flynn, respectively, requested some leniency. Each defendant has children from a previous marriage and they are now married with a baby. O’Flynn was in custody until Friday and Clarke was released on bail to get domestic affairs in order by then.
They both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud.
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