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Gardaí has uncovered a large pandemic unemployment payment fraud that is claimed under the names of 73 innocent people who gave the scammers their personal details because they thought they were volunteering to serve on the jury.
The Irish Times has learned that a large volume of people over the summer received emails claiming to be from the Irish Courts Service effectively calling them to serve on their jury duty.
Recipients of the emails were asked to fill out a document attached to the email and asked to include their personal details, including full name, address, and PPS numbers. However, the emails were from a gang of scammers posing as the Irish Court Service in the emails.
When personal data was returned by 73 unsuspecting victims who believed they were complying with a request to serve on a jury, their data was used to claim pandemic unemployment payment (PUP) of up to € 350 per week.
The payments, all of which were approved by the Department of Social Protection, were entered into various accounts, including An Post accounts and even credit card accounts, which had been opened by the scammers under false names and using false passports and other forms. identification. .
The Garda investigation team handling the case, which is led by Det Supt Michael Cryan of the Garda National Economic Crimes Bureau (GNECB), alerted the Department of Social Protection to the fraud. Detectives have also established that some € 165,000 was stolen before the fraud was discovered.
The criminal investigation also found that all emails sent to the 73 people whose identities were used to claim the PUP came from the same email address. All requests made for PUP payments also came from the same address, but the Department of Social Protection did not detect the fraud. Even after gardaí alerted the department to the fraud, some of the payments continued and some arrears were even paid.
While some of the stolen money was still in the deposit accounts and payment card accounts to which the PUP payments were made, most of the € 165,000 was already spent or transferred to other accounts and only one a small part of them has been frozen by the Garda.
Gardaí investigating the fraud identified several suspects and a man was arrested in Co Cork on Tuesday morning. He was still detained in the afternoon.
The suspect was being held for questioning at the Midleton Garda station and Gardai believes he is associated with several other scammers who acted together to steal the money. Gardaí has tracked electronic documents and records associated with the PUP payments being claimed and also with the accounts the payments were made to and photographs of various people were used in the IDs used to facilitate fraud.
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