A MOTHER-of-two has been jailed for a year for defrauding Bank of Ireland of €103,000 over a five-year period.
The court heard that the woman who had once represented Ireland in ballroom dancing had become carried away with a Celtic Tiger lifestyle but now had no funds to pay any of the money back.
Former BoI employee Susan Dowling (37) made bogus expenses claims on behalf of affiliated companies such as Mercer Limited and lodged the cheques into her personal bank account and credit card account.
Judge Katherine Delahunt noted she had since lost her job and her home but said she had to punish Dowling’s “wholesale deception”. She sentenced her to 12 months on each count to run concurrently with each other.
“There was no excuse or desperation for funds, it was simply to lead a high lifestyle,” Judge Delahunt commented.
Garda Niall O’Meara agreed with Erwin Mill-Arden, defending, that his client had come from “humble beginnings” in Dublin’s Basin Street and had been “dazzled” by the south city lifestyle during the Celtic Tiger years.
He agreed Dowling had described falling in with a “swish” peer group through her job, developing a serious cocaine addiction and mounting up debts with a regular cocaine supplier.
The Garda agreed he had to speak to the social welfare department on Dowling’s behalf after they discovered she lived in “dire circumstances” during the fraud investigation.
Garda O’Meara confirmed Dowling had been supporting herself and her children on the IR£35,000 she was left with after the sale of her Basin Street family home and since her suspension from BoI. Dowling, of The Park, Wolstan Haven, Celbridge, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 70 counts of fraudulently obtaining cheques by pretending BoI group secretary’s office owed them to other departments between December 1998 and April 2003.
Garda O’Meara told Vincent Heneghan, prosecuting, that BoI suspended Dowling from her job as clerical assistant in the group secretary’s office in 2003 and reported the offences to gardaí in March 2004.
He said Dowling had followed the same pattern over five years by filling out false requisition forms with forged signatures and lodging the money into her personal accounts or cashing the cheques directly.
Mr Mill-Arden submitted to Judge Delahunt that his client had €1,000 lent from a friend as a “token presentation”.
Garda O’Meara agreed that Dowling had found work at a hauliers after her suspension from BoI but was forced to leave when the father of her children began continuously harassing her during family law proceedings.
Mr Mill-Arden submitted that his client wished to apologise to the people she had hurt through her actions.