A "compulsive spender" who defrauded her employer of €64,000 has had her sentencing put back after she misled Dublin Circuit Criminal Court about repayment plans.
She had used part of the money to repay a €34,000 fraud of previous employers.
Anne Levins (35), a former accounts worker at the European Commission's Dublin office, produced at an earlier hearing a credit union draft for €28,000 as partial repayment.
She said a further €29,000 would be available immediately, telling Judge Desmond Hogan both sums were from the proceeds of the sale of her home in Drogheda, Co Louth.
However, Det Michael McKenna, Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation, told Judge Hogan yesterday he had subsequently discovered that the €28,000 draft was not the proceeds of the sale of Ms Levins's home but a loan from the credit union.
He said Ms Levins, Forest Park, Drogheda, had not made any repayments on this loan since the last court hearing and she had not made any more funds available to repay the European Commission as she had undertaken to do.
On November 9th, 2001, she defrauded the Dublin office of the commission of €10,600.
Later that day she offered the money in court as a part payment to two previous employers she had defrauded.
On that occasion she was given a 12-month sentence, suspended for five years. However, she continued to defraud the commission's office in Dawson Street.
Levins faces up to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to 13 sample counts of 116 counts relating to 67 fraudulent transactions between August 2001 and April 2002.
She had made out cheques to herself or paid to cash and had cashed them herself. In some cases the money was paid into her own bank account. She had forged the signatures of two people in the commission's office who were authorised to sign cheques.
In other cases letters from the commission instructing its bank, AIB, to pay debtors were altered in favour of Ms Levins.
The court heard yesterday that Levins was now offering a cash sum of €9,000 as a part payment. Judge Hogan was also told the defendant's mother, Mary Levins, had offered to pay €13,148 towards the debt. Her sister, Gillian Levins, was offering €14,000.
Brendan Grehan SC, for Levins, said the €9,000 being offered by his client had been paid to her by the Department of Social and Family Affairs and would be available immediately.
Judge Hogan said he was beginning to view Levins's assurances with scepticism. He had deferred sentencing in July to allow the mother of one to return a further €29,000 to the commission which she had promised to do. "That wasn't even remotely true," Judge Hogan said.
He said previous assurances to the court, relayed through Mr Grehan, were "at best a product of Ms Levins's imagination".
She had realised €110,000 from the sale of her house. A "huge tranche" of this had "disappeared" on bills which "nobody knows anything about". Her probation report made for "dismal reading".
She was now acting in an "unfair" and "harsh" manner involving her mother and sister in the case, at considerable financial burden to both women. "She will do anything to get herself out of trouble. It's robbing Peter to pay Paul. If you want to get out of a hole stop digging," the judge told her.
Judge Hogan deferred sentencing to December 20th. He was considering a "custodial option".