By Sonya McLean
A man who was “a henchman in an attempt to extort two innocent people” out of €20,000 has been jailed for two and half years.
Des Smyth (25), with an address at The Island, Chaplizod, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to charges of making unwarranted demands with menace in March 2020.
A second man is due before the courts on similar charges.
Detective Garda Sarah Barry told Diana Stuart BL, prosecuting, that the charges related to two separate victims – a man whose half brother was a drug dealer and owed a debt and his boss.
Both victims had nothing to do with the drug industry and were unconnected to the debt.
Judge Orla Crowe said very serious threats were issued and that Smyth was “a henchman in an attempt to extort two innocent people”.
She said the contact was repeated and the threats were very serious.
She imposed a sentence of four years and suspended the final 18 months for three years to encourage Smyth in his drug rehabilitation.
Det Gda Barry said CCTV footage showed Smyth and a co-accused arriving at the first victim’s place of work on March 20, 2020.
They called to the office and said the first victim owed them money.
They told the staff that the man owed €20,000 and that they would return the following day to collect.
The staff told them that the victim said he didn’t owe any money, but a threat was issued that they would slit the man’s children’s throats if they didn’t get the €20,000.
Later that day, this victim’s boss got a phone call from a number connected with the co-accused but there is no evidence to confirm which of the men were speaking to him as the man could hear two people speaking.
The man told the callers that he didn’t have any money to give them, but the callers replied that he had a car, a house and named his other business.
He told the callers that the first victim would sort it out.
He later got a further five calls from a private number but he didn’t answer them.
Det Gda Barry confirmed that the first victim lived “a clean life” and had no drug addictions.
He had been working for the second victim for five years.
The first victim got a call from his sister who told him that a note had been put through their door saying they were looking for one of his relatives and if they did not get the €20,000, they would burn the house down.
Det Gda Barry confirmed that the first victim’s half brother owed a debt.
Further phone calls were received again threatening to kill the victim if the money was not handed over.
The callers knew his wife’s name and the fact he had children.
Gardaí were alerted and confidential information led to Smyth and the co-accused being nominated as suspects.
CCTV footage from their arrival at the victim’s place of work also led to their identification.
Det Gda Barry accepted in cross-examination from Keith Spencer BL, defending, that the men knew the victim’s half brother due to the fact that they were involved in a drug dealing operation together.
She further accepted that Smyth was his co-accused “right hand man”.
She confirmed that although the calls came from the co-accused’s phone, both victims always said that the threats came from two different voices so gardaí were unable to establish who issued which threats.
Mr Spencer said Smyth was led into this “murky world” due to his own drug addiction and asked the court to accepted that his involvement was lower than that of his co-accused.
He said it was “an odious crime visited upon two people who had nothing to do with the world that he (Smyth) inhabited at the time” and as such, Smyth had brought the two men “into a world they had no business being in”.
Counsel said his client was remorseful and that he had a “been recruited into a campaign that he had nothing to do with”.