A woman has been remanded in custody for sentence after being found guilty of making 38 malicious hoax calls to gardaí and the emergency services.
Rachel Stafford (31) of William Street North, Dublin 1 had pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuiit Criminal Court to 54 counts of "sending via the telecommunication systems, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety, a call which she knew to be false" on dates from January 2001 to December 2003.
Judge Frank O'Donnell directed the jury to return not guilty verdicts on 12 of the charges. The jury convicted her unanimously on 38 of the 42 counts sent to it for deliberation in the seven-day trial and found her not guilty on the four remaining counts.
Stafford made hoax '999' calls to gardai and to Dublin Fire Brigade and Ambulance Service claiming there were people in need of help at various addresses.
When the various services responded they found that people living at the addresses given by Stafford knew nothing of the "emergency". Not one person was removed to hospital arising from all the calls she made.
Some of the fictitious "emergencies" included a call out because someone had allegedly fallen down the stairs, another person was in respiratory difficulty and another was in labour.
The jury of three women and nine men heard that her calls caused great annoyance both to the emergency services and to the residents in the various properties.
Evidence was produced showing that a Vodafone number, an O2 number and an eircom number supplied to the call centres were associated with Stafford.