A man who stole almost €2,000 in a series of ATM distraction thefts targeting elderly and vulnerable victims has been jailed for four and a half years.
Levers Zinca (31) claimed he was carrying out the thefts in order to send money to his sick grandmother in Romania. He used leaflets to cover the cash dispensing area as he distracted victims using the ATMs including an elderly nun, a man with poor sight and a wheelchair user.
Gda Oisin Burke told the court he was of the opinion Zinca was loitering around ATMs to target vulnerable victims. Zinca was identified from CCTV.
Zinca, of no fixed abode, but formerly with addresses in Dublin 8 and Co Kildare, pleaded guilty to seven counts of theft at ATMs totalling €1,940 on dates between July and December 2025.
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Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that Zinca has similar previous convictions here and in Belgium, Denmark and Germany.
Judge Cephas Power said the aggravating factors included the fact these thefts were planned and part of an organised strategy by the accused to take the property of the victim.
He noted Zinca was desperate at the time with a sick grandmother and financing a drug addiction.
He said it was also aggravating that many of the victims were elderly or incapacitated in some way and that Zinca has prior convictions for similar offences.
In mitigation, he considered his co-operation and admissions, as well as his guilty pleas and his prior work history. He noted Zinca had fallen into financial hardship on losing his job.
The judge imposed a five-year sentence with the final six months suspended for two years. He backdated the sentence to January 2026, when Zinca went into custody.
Burke told Eimear Delargy BL, prosecuting, that Zinca’s modus operandi involved distracting the victims while they were trying to take money out of an ATM.
The court heard Zinca would cover the ATM screen or cash dispensing area with a leaflet or map and distract the victims, some of whom were vulnerable due to age or disability, while he pressed buttons and took the cash dispensed.
The first victim was an 80-year-old woman using an ATM at the AIB branch in Dundrum Town Centre, followed a week later by an 80-year-old nun checking her bank balance at an ATM on O’Connell Street.
In both these cases, he approached the women at the ATM, spoke to them as they used it while obscuring their view of the ATM with leaflets. Both women subsequently discovered €200 missing from their accounts and reported it to gardaí. There were seven victims in total over six months.
CCTV was reviewed in all the cases and Zinca was identified. He was arrested in January 2026.
Keith Spencer BL, defending, said Zinca has made a full apology and his family had brought €2,000 to court to reimburse the victims.
He said his client had been working in a recycling company but lost his job and was “down on his luck” around this time.
Zinca, a father of three, has now linked in with the drug counsellor while in custody.
