By Declan Brennan
A woman who took part in a €27,500 “smishing scam” involving Facebook has been given a suspended sentence and ordered to take part in restorative justice.
Mary Maughan (39) of Dominic Street, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to processing the proceeds of crime through her Bank of Ireland account in August 2022, contrary to the Money Laundering Act.
Detective Garda Cliff Singleton told Brian Storan BL, prosecuting, that in August 2022, the victim of the scam was holidaying in Spain when she received a text message to her mobile phone purporting to be from An Post.
The text message stated that a package had arrived for her and she needed to pay a one-euro fee to release it. She clicked a link in the message, which brought her to a website that asked for her Bank of Ireland account details.
A short time after, she received a phone call from a man pretending to be from Bank of Ireland customer care. She told this person she thought the text message might be a scam, and he told her to delete the banking app from her phone and said the bank would re-issue her card.
Another man called her a few days later, again posing as the bank customer care and reminded her not to reinstall the banking app. Five days later, a genuine official from the bank called her, and she realised she had been scammed and €27,000 had been stolen from her account.
The money had been taken in one transaction and moved into Maughan’s account. By the time the bank became aware of what was happening, €20,000 of it was gone.
The bank returned the money stolen from the victim and remains at a loss of €20,000.
When gardai went to question her, Maughan made complete and fulsome admissions. She said that a named individual, whom she knew indirectly, had contacted her on Facebook and promised to pay her €400 for the use of her bank account.
After the money was moved into her account, this man and another man came to her home and told her to get into a car with them to make a number of cash withdrawals. Maughan told gardai that while she wasn’t threatened, she felt intimidated, and she asked a female friend to accompany her.
The men drove her around the city, where a number of withdrawals were made from cash machines and at foreign exchanges. She said that after each transaction, she handed the cash straight over to the men.
When asked where she thought the money had come from, the defendant told gardai she thought it was from drugs.
The court heard that Maughan never received any money from the men and that after the withdrawals, the person on the Facebook account “went radio silent”.
Dt Gda Singleton told the court that garda inquiries about this profile were “met with resistance from Facebook”. He agreed with Mr Storan that “Facebook didn’t assist”.
He told Rebecca Smith BL, defending, that Maughan was living quite modestly and was in receipt of social welfare. He agreed that she was very cooperative with gardai from the get-go.
“In my 31 years, I’ve never dealt with anyone more pleasant or more forthcoming,” the garda said.
Ms Smith said her client was in some financial stress at the time. She said she is extraordinarily embarrassed and remorseful about her involvement in this crime.
Judge Martina Baxter said that sentencing in these cases needed to incorporate an element of deterrence.
“These scams are going on in voluminous quantities,” she said.
Sentencing Maughan, she said Maughan had engaged in the crime for “easy money” and that a serious fraud was perpetrated on an individual who needed the money. “Innocent people are being duped in a sophisticated fashion,” the judge noted.
She set a headline sentence of two and a half years, which she reduced to 12 months, taking into account the mitigating factors, including Maughan’s genuine and early remorse, her lack of previous convictions and her cooperation with gardai.
Judge Baxter suspended the sentence on a number of conditions, including that Maughan engage in a restorative justice programme for six months