Student who acted as money mule for a fraud may avoid criminal conviction

By Isabel Hayes

A third-level student who acted as a money mule for a fraud involving a Kuwaiti bank will avoid a criminal conviction if she stays out of trouble for a year, a judge has said.

Rebecca Mukoko (21) agreed to give her bank card, her PIN and her online banking details to a “friend of a friend” who went on to use her account to defraud an international energy company of just over €6500, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard today.

Mukoko, of Whitechurch Heights, Ballyboden, Dublin, pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering within the State between May 13 and 14, 2019.

The court heard Mukoko, a nursing student at the time of the offence, did not receive any financial reward for giving out her details.

She said she felt pressured into doing it. She has no previous convictions.

Today, Judge Martin Nolan accepted that Mukoko had made “a bad error of judgment” but that she had a good future ahead of her. He accepted she did not receive any financial benefit for her actions.

The court heard Mukoko is currently doing a pharmaceutical course and working two jobs to support her mother in the wake of her father’s recent death.

The judge adjourned the matter for a year and ordered Mukoko to pay a fine of €400. He said he would discharge her from the indictment if she is of good behaviour during that time period.

“This is not a precedent,” the judge said, warning that others who come before the courts on similar charges will face custodial sentences.

“Most cases of young people involved (in these kinds of crimes) know third parties are going to use their accounts for nefarious purposes and receive a small amount of money, thinking it’s worth it,” the judge said.

“It’s not. They will go on to have a conviction.”

Detective Garda Shane Whelan told Noel Devitt BL, prosecuting, that gardaí were contacted by AIB in relation to suspicious activity in Mukoko’s account.

An amount of €6541 was paid into her account on the date in question and then withdrawn by means of a cash withdrawal and an online transfer.

CCTV footage taken from the ATM cash withdrawal showed an unidentified man taking the money out of Mukoko’s account.

Det Gda Whelan said the money came from a Kuwaiti energy company, which unwittingly transferred the money to Mukoko’s account after an email exchange was hacked and the bank details were changed.

When interviewed by gardaí, Mukoko initially said she had lost her bank card before admitting she gave it to a “friend of a friend”.

She said she also supplied her PIN and online banking details.

“He got in my friend’s ear,” she told gardaí. “I trusted him because my friend said it was OK.”

Mukoko gave a description of the man to gardaí but was unwilling to give his name.

Her description matched that of the man seen withdrawing money from her account, the court heard.

Keith Spencer BL, defending, said that since this incident, there has been a concentrated advertising campaign to warn young people that holding money in their account is illegal. He said his client was well-educated, from a good background and had never come to the attention of gardaí before.