Not the cleverest of criminals, this lad.
A 38-year old Dublin man was handed a suspended jail sentence for welfare fraud in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court today and he really only has himself to blame.
According to The Irish Times, Michael Mongan pleaded guilty to using a false identity to claim over €3,000 over a three-month period.
The problem was flagged after Mongan himself walked into a Garda station to complain that the social welfare claim he had fraudulently made had stopped.
In April 2010, Mongan, claiming to be a man known as Robert Anthony Gavin, visited Coolock Garda station and complained that his weekly social welfare payment of €195 had been stopped.
When Sergeant Brendan Bergin went to verify his ID – an English birth certificate – he discovered that it was Mongan.
He also found that as well as claiming just under €3,000 under Gavin’s name over a three-month period between December 2009 and March 2010, Mongan had been legitimately claiming social welfare payments under his own name.
Judge Martin Nolan imposed a two-year prison sentence but suspended it fully on the basis that Mongan keeps the peace.
Commenting on Mongan’s action, Nolan seemed as baffled as anyone as to why he had gone to the Gardai in the first place.
“For the life of me I don’t know why he appeared at a Garda station to complain,” Nolan said.
“But he did, and it’s lucky for him that he did, because he was stopped in his tracks.”
Nolan added that Mongan would have been sent to the jail if the amount of money he fraudulently claimed had been closer to €10,000 or €15,000, but the fact that he pleaded guilty, as well as his co-operation with the Gardai, led to him suspending the sentence.
It seems that sometimes you can have too much of a good thing, eh Michael?
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