Crime networks, some with more than 100 recruits, were discovered, and in excess of 200 people were prosecuted when a Dublin Garda station assigned just two detectives to investigate economic crime full-time.
The same detectives also found more than €5 million being moved around, including by 180 people linked to low-level street drug dealing, in the Balbriggan area.
Garda middle managers now want local economic crime units established in stations countrywide to combat an avalanche of offending, in the way local narcotics units were established 30 years ago.
Garda inspectors and sergeants believe a vast network of money laundering being used by fraudsters, drug dealers and other criminals is operating across the country.
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Insp Brian Downey said at Balbriggan Garda station in north Dublin, where he is based, a new local economic crime unit had started more than 200 money laundering prosecutions in the past three years. This compares to three such offences detected by personnel at the station before the unit was created.
“We were able to identify €5 million going through one district related to money laundering,” he said at the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors annual conference in Westport, Co Mayo.
“If that was replicated across the country ... We could take the legs from under them.”
While violent crime and other types of offending were declining in the Republic, economic crimes were “bucking the trend and going through the roof” as crime was moving online. Downey said the unit at his station was established because of the sheer volume of economic crimes being reported.
Vast sums of money were being lost in scams and frauds linked to bogus phone calls, emails and texts sent by fraudsters often purporting to be banks, he said. However, while those cyber-enabled organised gangs were laundering large sums of money, so too were those involved in the drugs trade.
Drug crime and money laundering – even among dealers active on the street – were more closely linked than ever. Downey said the drugs unit in Balbriggan was now searching for mobile phones and any financial documents, just as much as narcotics, during searches in an attempt to dismantle gangs and find those involved.
It was also commonplace for fraud victims to lose €5,000 to €15,000, or for similar sums to be moved through the bank accounts of money mules; people who agreed to allow their accounts to be used in that way on the promise of a commission-based fee.
“These offences are almost all being prosecuted on indictment because of the sums of money involved ... the values of these thefts are huge,” he said of the Director of Public Prosecutions directing that the cases must be decided before a judge and jury at the Circuit Court.
In one case, a member of the public had bought a ticket online for €160 only to realise they had fallen victim to a fraud which was then reported to gardaí in Balbriggan. The economic crime investigators at the station soon discovered the seller had repeated the fraud over a two-year period, stealing €200,000 from victims.
“We are following the money with the expertise now built up,” he said of the now three-person unit. “With some of the drug money being laundered in our area, we had 180 people sending money to different places. And one guy was clearly the bagman; all the money was going to him.”
When money was eventually withdrawn, via an ATM, by a key person in the network, it was often spotted quickly and the CCTV images capturing the withdrawals were available to gardaí. That footage, coupled with the money trail and the size of the sums being stolen or laundered, resulted in a large volume of prosecutions.
