Law student to serve time for laundering over €100k stolen as part of invoice redirection scams

By Declan Brennan

A law student has received a 21-month prison sentence for laundering over €100,000 stolen as part of invoice redirection scams.

Gardaí investigating the thefts from a Cork individual, a Mayo agri-business, and an Italian company found 50 images of other people's bank accounts on the phone of Dublin man Adeleke Adelani (27).

Detective Garda David Jennings told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that €124,000 went through Adelani's bank accounts and only €3,500 could be legitimately accounted for. The former figure came from social welfare payments.

The court heard that it is the State's case that the defendant was not involved in setting up the invoice redirection scams but was a recruiter for money mule bank accounts to be used to facilitate the thefts.

Adelani, with an address at Riverside view, Lower Main Street, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, pleaded guilty to laundering €100,397 in criminal cash in November 2019 and in January 2020.

He also pleaded guilty to laundering the proceeds of crime on dates between October 2018 and February 2021.

Garda Michael Moran told Caroline Cummings BL, prosecuting, that in November 2019 a man who was having a house built in Ballinteer, Co Cork, requested bank details from his builder by email in order to make a final stage payment.

The victim unknowingly received a fraudulent email in which the bank details of the builder had been changed for a money mule account. The victim then wired the payment of €9,245 to this account.

In January 2020 Breda Waldron, the accounts manager from Mayo based company Western Brand Poultry, made a payment of €91,152 to a bank account which she understood was the account of a supplier.

The account details had been fraudulently changed to a Permanent TSB account in Balbriggan, Co Dublin.

The bank account belonged to a college student and the bank became concerned at the size of the payment and froze the account. Just over €62,500 was recalled to the Mayo firm, leaving a loss of €28,634.

The holder of the PTSB account was arrested. Gardaí found evidence of communications with Adelani and on June 13, 2022 they arrested him. He admitted going to some cash machines where money was withdrawn and purchasing of high value mobile items such as an iPhone.

The court heard none of the stolen money has been recovered.

Dt Gda Jennings told the court that in October 2019 an Italian company had €22,581 taken from it through an invoice redirection fraud.

This money ended up in the bank account of a 41-year-old Dublin woman who in March 2022 received a suspended prison sentence.

Dt Gda Jennings said gardaí examined Adelani's mobile phone and found around 50 images of the bank account details of people with no connection to Adelani. One of these persons was a student on Adelani's law course in Letterkenny, Co Donegal.

Another person was a member of Dublin Fire Brigade who later told gardaí he had lost his bank card in 2020. A woman whose bank details were found on Adelani's phone also said she had lost her card and didn't know Adelani.

Gda Jennings said that when asked to explain the €124,000 going through his bank account Adelani said he had earned it from cutting hair during the Covid lockdown.

He has previous convictions for assault, false imprisonment, burglary, and production of an article from an incident in July 2022.

He received a partially suspended sentence of seven years from Letterkenny Circuit Court and he has a release date in November 2029.

Dt Gda Jennings agreed with Paul Carroll SC, defending, that Adelani wasn't directly involved in the invoice redirection emails. Mr Carroll said his client was born in Nigeria but came to this country at a very young age with his mother and was brought up in Clonsilla in Dublin.

Judge Martin Nolan sad that the defendant “was up to his neck in money laundering”. He said his job was to procure bank accounts to launder the money and he was getting substantial rewards for it.

He sentenced Adelani to a 21 month prison term to run consecutive to the sentence he is currently serving and which expires in 2029.

He said he was taking this existing sentence into consideration and if that wasn't in place he would have set a headline sentence of around four years.