AN ELDERLY man who fraudulently claimed almost €140,000 of a dead acquaintance’s pension for 23 years has been given a suspended sentence provided he repays An Post €40 a week.
Patrick McLoughlin (66), Ballyfermot, guilty pleaded at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday to 10 sample charges, including forging pension vouchers and theft at Upper Ballyfermot Post Office between September 21st, 1984 and June 1st, 2007.
He had no previous convictions.
Judge Katherine Delahunt suspended the three-year sentence for 10 years to allow McLoughlin to repay the money, although she acknowledged that the €136,000, which was mostly spent on alcohol, would never be fully reimbursed.
She did not think that society or McLoughlin’s sick wife, for whom he is full-time carer, would benefit from his incarceration since he now had cancer and had made “genuine efforts” to repay the money out of his disability allowance.
One of the major features in this case was how easily McLoughlin managed to defraud the money. She called for a review of the “lax” system.
“This is a case where systems should be looked at to see how easily this happened.”
She also noted that An Post had reimbursed the State the full amount paid out to McLoughlin.
The fraud was discovered after social welfare staff were preparing to make the “presidential centenarian bounty payment” to the man whose 100th birthday would have been in April 2007.
Garda Sgt Colm Kelly told Bernard Condon, prosecuting, that in July 2007, a social welfare officer had called to the registered home of Gerry Donnelly to organise the presidential award.
He learned that the current owner had bought the house in 1989 and gardaí were contacted. A death certificate later showed that Mr Donnelly had died on September 17th, 1984.
McLoughlin was arrested in June 2007 after gardaí viewed CCTV footage of him collecting Mr Donnelly’s pension at his local post office.
He claimed that Mr Donnelly’s son had stayed at his home and had left his father’s pension book behind. He also told gardaí that a bus pass, in Mr Donnelly’s name but bearing McLoughlin’s photograph, had been supplied to him by the same man.
McLoughlin later admitted that he stayed with Mr Donnelly shortly before he died and that he had paid for his funeral. He said Mr Donnelly’s son had allowed him to claim the man’s pension in order to recuperate the costs.
Sgt Kelly agreed with Paul Carroll, defending, that his client had arranged a scheme to repay the State after social welfare advised him of what they termed “an overpayment”.
He accepted that McLoughlin had collected his own pension in the same post office and was known to the staff there.
Sgt Kelly further accepted that McLoughlin did not own a car or his own house nor had he ever travelled abroad or lived “the high life”.
Mr Carroll told Judge Delahunt that his client had suggested to the Department of Social Welfare that it deduct money from his disability allowance in order to pay back the money he stole.