A former Anglo Irish Bank employee will be sentenced next week for a €200,000 computer fraud at a Limerick branch of the bank three year ago.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard yesterday Gordon O’Brien (43) committed the fraud as Anglo was calling in its loan accounts during the nationalisation of the bank. It was later noticed during an audit by Anglo’s successor, Irish Bank Resolution Corporation.
O’Brien’s counsel told Judge Patricia Ryan that his client had refused a solicitor when interviewed by gardaí. He contrasted this with “some of his employers” who used the services of solicitors during other Garda investigations.
Counsel said O’Brien is currently working in the UK but has abided by his bail conditions.
He said his client was in constant phone contact with gardaí, helping them with their investigations, and this was not a case where he “had to be collected from the steps of a plane at Dublin airport”.
Clients’ accounts
The former clerk committed the fraud by transferring clients’ money into several bank accounts he controlled. He would then take money from internal Anglo accounts and put it into the clients’ accounts to make them seem in order.
O’Brien, Springfield, Dooradoyle, Co Limerick, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to six counts of dishonestly using a computer with the intention of making gain or causing loss at Anglo Irish Bank, Henry Street, Limerick.
The offences occurred over a 10-month period between September 2010 and June 2011.
O’Brien made full admissions when confronted by bank officials and all the money was returned soon after.
He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Judge Ryan remanded him on continuing bail until July 25th when she will finalise the case.
Det Garda Stephen Niland of the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation told prosecuting counsel Paul Carroll that there was a lengthy delay in IBRC making a complaint to gardaí because of what was going on in the bank at the time.
O’Brien’s fraud revolved around Anglo’s operations in Limerick, which involved lending money to clients for the leasing of equipment, usually tractors and plant machinery.
In 2009, Anglo was being taken over by the State and was in the process of calling in these loans. Customers were settling their accounts using cheques and cash lodgments.
Computer crime
O’Brien used a computer to transfer money from these accounts into seven accounts he controlled in various financial institutions. Two of these accounts belonged to his sister and cousin. O’Brien told them he needed to use their accounts for share dealing.
He would then transfer money from internal Anglo “suspense accounts” into the client accounts to make them appear normal. Gardaí estimated that about 30 client accounts were affected.
The fraud was noticed by IBRC auditors, and O’Brien admitted everything during a meeting with senior management in August 2011. He also told staff he had hidden almost €30,000 in stolen cash in a safe deposit box in the bank.
The money was repaid within several weeks. Most of it was still on deposit in O’Brien’s Anglo accounts when the fraud was noticed.
Defence counsel Dean Kelly said O’Brien and his wife were going to lose their jobs because of the banking crisis and wanted to put money aside for this eventuality.
They also needed money for their autistic son’s education because their government grant was also going to be cut off.
“He sought to amass a war chest, wrongly, but for the right reasons,” counsel said, adding that O’Brien lived an ordinary life without “expensive golf trips, clothes and cars”.
