A serial fraudster and "compulsive spender" has been jailed for two years at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. Anne Levins (35), Forest Park, Drogheda, Co Louth, had twice tried to use stolen money to repay employers whom she had defrauded.
Levins had her sentencing on multiple fraud counts postponed last month. Gardaí wanted to check the origins of some of the money she had offered to the court to repay the European Commission office in Dublin, her former employer. She had pleaded guilty to 13 sample counts of 116 counts relating to 67 fraudulent transactions at the EC between August 2001 and April 2002 valued at €64,000.
She had made out cheques to herself or paid to cash and had cashed them herself.
During her last court appearance on October 20th before Judge Desmond Hogan, Levins offered a cash sum of €9,000 as part-payment of the €64,000 she defrauded from the commission. The court was told that her mother, Mary Levins, had offered to pay €13,148 towards the debt. Her sister, Gillian Levins, was offering €14,000.
Levins had herself offered €28,000 at a July hearing. She told the court in July that the €28,000 was the proceeds of the sale of her home and that a further €29,000 would be available the next day to pay the commission.
During last month's case the court was told this was untrue.
The €28,000 was a credit union loan, on which she had never made repayments, while the €29,000 she promised never materialised.
The court was told that Levins, a single mother of one, had realised €110,000 from the sale of her house. A huge tranche of this had disappeared on bills which nobody knew anything about. Her probation report made for "dismal reading".
During last month's hearing, gardaí said they wanted sentencing postponed in order that they could confirm that the €9,000 cash offered on that occasion by Levins was a social welfare payment, as she had claimed.
In court yesterday, Det Garda Michael McKenna of the National Bureau of Fraud Investigation said when he investigated where the money had come from he found that last month Levins, who was awaiting sentence at that time, had stolen it from her latest employer, a communications firm in Drogheda.
Det Garda McKenna said in the latest incident Levins had signed three cheques to herself. Her employer believed the signatures on the cheques had been forged. One cheque was for €13,147, one was for €10,000 and another for €8,933.
While two of the cheques had been stopped, Det Garda McKenna said, his investigations revealed that the €9,000 offered in court last month had come from the €13,147 cheque. He said Levin's employer had contacted gardaí after reading about the case.
Det Garda McKenna said a formal complaint about the latest incident had been made and a criminal investigation had begun. He also told Judge Hogan that another case was in train where Levins had allegedly defrauded €78,000 from a third employer.
Levins already had a conviction for fraud which predated the European Commission case, for which she had received a 12-month suspended sentence. She used some €34,000 of the money defrauded from the EC to repay some of the first fraud.
She had amassed no assets to speak of. She had compulsively spent a lot of the money on transient items. Other money had been used to pay household bills. She had also used defrauded cash to pay her Vodafone telephone bill and paid money to Quinn Direct, with which her car was insured.
Money was also paid to settle amounts owed to the satellite television company Chorus. On another occasion she had paid €4,366 to a company which operated "tarot" phone lines.
Judge Hogan said that despite the court dealing with her "kindly", Levins had repeatedly misled it. He had no option but to impose a custodial sentence and handed down a two-year term.
Brendan Grehan SC for Levins apologised to the court. However, Judge Hogan said he was not to blame for the way he had been instructed by his client.
