Young woman has Covid money laundering charge struck out
The woman said she became increasingly suspicious of the transactions.
A 23-year-old woman had a charge of money laundering struck out in court last week.
The 2021 offending involved fraudulently receiving Covid support payments, which were introduced by the Department of Social Protection for workers who lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Gardaí identified that fraudulent applications of this scheme were being lodged into the woman’s account, amounting to a total of €3,850.
The woman’s defence solicitor, Hilary Delahunty, said that somebody well-known to his client made the application to receive the €350 payments using her bank account.
“She was astonished to think anything fraudulent was happening,” Mr Delahunty said.
“I was just trying to help my friend. I didn’t think you could do fraud with Covid payments,” the woman told gardaí in her interview.
She added that she became increasingly suspicious of the transactions, and told him to stop.
The court heard that this man has since been prosecuted and that he is "very high up in the chain” of criminality.
“Gardaí were all over him,” Mr Delahunty said.
The woman has no previous convictions, and the investigating garda officer in the case believes that she received no financial gain from the scam.
Mr Delahunty described her “as a lovely young lady” who never broke the law before. The woman wrote a letter of apology to the court, and presented €1,000 in compensation to the Department of Social Protection.
Judge John Cheatle said that the woman helped the gardaí to the best of her ability and has a clean criminal record.
He struck out the case.
