By Isabel Hayes
An “important actor” in an organised crime money laundering operation within the State, who benefited from a €500,000 An Post smishing scam, has been jailed for seven and a half years.
Among other crimes, Brandon Abrahams (33) was involved in making false documents for “gratuitous self-interest” that were so sophisticated, they were accepted as genuine by financial organisations and state bodies including An Garda Siochana, Judge Martina Baxter told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court while sentencing him on Friday.
When officers from the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau raided the home of Abrahams in 2024, they found a laptop containing “thousands and thousands” of Excel spreadsheet pages outlining people’s personal debit card information from around the world.
Abrahams had been making sophisticated and high quality fake UK driving licences and utility bills in different aliases, which he used to set up various accounts in financial institutions including An Post and the credit union, and which he also sold to other fraudsters, Detective Garda Sean Duignan told Diana Stuart SC, prosecuting.
A total of €147,230 which went through his various accounts over the relevant period, the court heard.
Abrahams, of Belvedere Place, Dublin 1, pleaded guilty to one count of participating or contributing to the activity of a criminal organisation contrary to section 72 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006.
He pleaded guilty to a further nine offences including money laundering, possessing proceeds of crime and possessing a false instrument. The offences occurred over a two-and-a-half year period on dates between 2022 and 2024.
He has 55 previous convictions, mainly for road traffic offences as well as theft, deception, drugs and criminal damage.
His co-accused, Kim Porter (31) of Casement Park, Finglas, Dublin 11, pleaded guilty to 10 related offences involving money laundering, deception, enhancing a criminal organisation, possession of cocaine and making off from a hotel without paying for her stay. Evidence in her case was heard earlier this week and was adjourned to July for finalisation.
Sentencing Abrahams, Judge Martina Baxter said there were concerns about a number of his assertions to the Probation Service outlined in a report dating from just last week, that stated Porter is his fiancée and he is a stepfather to her three children.
Porter’s sentence hearing heard the couple were no longer together.
Judge Baxter said she could place little merit on Abrahams’ claims he suffers from PTSD, gambling and drug addiction, noting there is little evidence of this. She noted gardai are not even sure that Abrahams is originally from South Africa as he has claimed.
She also said she could not rely on an assertion by Abrahams that he will leave the country upon his release from custody, given that he is apparently still in a relationship with Porter and acts as a father figure to her children. He also has two children of his own who live here, the court heard.
“He played a role in the participation of this organisation, he was benefiting financially and was an important actor, achieving their aims by deceit and money laundering,” Judge Baxter said.
She noted Abrahams is doing Open University courses in custody “to enhance his clearly excellent computer and IT skills”.
“He has a pattern of entrenched offending,” she said. “He has been incarcerated for such offending in the past and it has not deterred him from returning to his highly criminalised lifestyle.”
She said he has displayed “a lack of honesty” surrounding his past circumstances, giving rise to a significant concern about his professed motivation to change.
She noted he has been assessed as being at a high risk of re-offending. He has been deemed unsuitable for probation supervision.
She set a jail term of seven and a half years, which she backdated to when Abrahams went into custody in September 2024. She said there was no reality to suspending any portion of this sentence, given the issues raised by the Probation Service.
At a previous sentence hearing, Det Gda Duignan said Abrahams benefitted from an An Post smishing scam in which €500,000 was stolen from about 30 accounts to benefit about 50 criminals, the court heard. He also received €56,400 into an AIB account he set up under an alias along with various other amounts into other accounts.
He used money which was the proceeds of crime to pay for the down payment on a Mercedes and received finance for the same car through fraudulent means. He and Porter bought flights to Turkey, leaving Aer Lingus at a loss of €450 under a “chargeback fraud”. They took these flights, the court heard.
Defence counsel, Fiona Murphy SC, put it to the garda that Abrahams is originally from South Africa, to which the sergeant replied that gardaí had not been able to ascertain where he was originally from.
When questioned as to whether Abrahams has gambling and drug addictions, as he claimed, Det Gda Duignan said that gardaí carried out a thorough investigation of Abrahams and nothing in his profile suggested he had a gambling addiction.
“He was socialising where drugs were being taken but it was not serious,” Det Gda Duignan said. “There was no evidence of gambling whatsoever.”
In her plea of mitigation, Ms Murphy said Abrahams co-operated with gardaí from the outset and that his early guilty pleas, which were signed pleas from the District Court, saved the courts from a lengthy trial.
She said he had a troubled childhood in South Africa and dabbled in drugs and gambling which spiralled following the death of his father, with whom he had recently reconnected.
He is doing well in custody, the court heard.