Man impersonating Top Flight agent sold bogus holidays worth €27,000

A man who stole over €27,000 from friends and acquaintances by selling them bogus package holidays has been remanded on bail pending sentence in February.

Aaron Weinrib (37), Cambridge Villas, Rathmines, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to eight sample charges of theft and fraud on dates between June 2010 and December 2010.

The court heard he had been selling three different holiday packages to New York, Las Vegas and Cape Town while claiming to be an agent for tour operator Top Flight. His defence counsel said he used the money to keep up “his cocaine lifestyle”, having lost his job.

Det Garda Conor Bresnan told Michael Bowman, prosecuting, that gardaí were contacted in November 2010 by two men who claimed Weinrib had sold them package holidays.

One man had paid €3,200 for four nights for four people in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, the other €550 for a two-night stay in New York.

Both men received some documentation bearing the Top Flight logo from Weinrib but later discovered that there was no holiday reserved for them.

Weinrib was taken in for questioning the following month and admitted that he had taken bank drafts from the men to cover the cost of the holidays.

He confirmed the holidays were never booked and said he had intended to refund them. "I did intend to run a promotion to honour them but it snowballed," Weinrib told gardaí.

Forgery
He admitted he had never worked for Top Flight and that the documentation was forged.

During a search of Weinrib’s apartment, gardaí discovered a list of people and contact details, and evidence on his computer of the documents generated with the Top Flight logo.

Weinrib sold these packages – which included a €1,100 holiday to Cape Town – to 20 people. He made €27,600 in the scam.

Garda Bresnan agreed with Lorcan Stains defending, that his client was co-operative with the investigation and had no previous convictions.

'Matter of time'
He accepted that it had not been a complicated offence and it was only "a matter of time" before the gardaí would have been alerted.

Counsel suggested to Garda Bresnan that while this had been “a crime of stupidity, from the outset it actually was a crime of desperation”.

Mr Staines said Weinrib had started to “engage in cocaine taking and the cocaine lifestyle” and subsequently lost his job.

He was embarrassed by that fact and tried to “keep up with the lifestyle but didn’t have the pay cheque to match it”.

"At first brush it seems idiotic but it goes deeper than that because we are dealing with an intelligent man," Mr Staines told Judge Mary Ellen Ring and submitted that it was "a head in the sand scenario".

“I would say that it is more than a head in the sand at this stage,” Judge Ring commented. “He doesn’t seem to be taking seriously that he is facing a custodial sentence at the moment.” She adjourned the case to February for sentence.