A Cork man who had more than €26,000 stolen from him in an email fraud scam has told a court he no longer has any faith in electronic financial transactions.
Sean McCarthy’s dream of a holiday home in Co. Kerry suffered a major setback when the final of three stage-payments to builders went into the wrong bank account after the invoice from the building firm was intercepted by scammers, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard.
The court was sentencing two young men, one a college student, who were both used as money mules by the unknown person behind the scam.
Jack Ward, 22, of Garrinch, Fethard, Tipperary, and Kelvin Kleinovis, 21, of Mayeston Green, St Margarets Road, Finglas, Dublin, both pleaded guilty to recklessly handling the proceeds of crime, contrary to the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act 2010.
The court heard that in 2019, Mr McCarthy had hired Lauragh Construction, a reputable building firm in Kerry, which then sent invoices for the stage payments from lauraughconstruction@gmail.com.
On April 10, 2019, an email invoice for €26,400 was replaced with one from lauraughconstructions@gmail.com and the bogus invoice provided the bank details for an account not belonging to the building firm.
Mr McCarthy paid the invoice using the bogus bank details and some time later his bank contacted him to tell him the transaction was fraudulent. He contacted gardaí and investigators tracked the bank account to Kleinovis.
Garda Shane McGrath told…
