Mother’s last-ditch bid to avoid jail... on the same day she’s due to be sent down
€460k fraudster in race against time to have sentence overturned
A MOTHER-OF-TWO due to be jailed this week for stealing over €460,000 from a multinational has launched an emergency appeal bid to avoid going to prison, the Irish Daily Mail can reveal.
Former company boss Lisa Lynch, 33, who is in danger of losing her home, was last month informed by Judge Martin Nolan that she’d have to go home and tell her two young children that she would be starting an 18-month prison sentence in the new year.
As a director of AGL Logistics, Lynch stole from Bibby Financial Services over a three-month period in 2013 and then laundered the money to keep her own company afloat, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard in December.
She took over AGL Logistics from her husband Andrew Lynch at the age of 24 ‘with minimal business skills’, after he was diagnosed with cancer – and just ten days after her first-born arrived by caesarean, her trial also heard.
The Mail has now learned that the Court of Appeal has agreed in principle to hear her fast-tracked appeal against sentence as soon as the courts reopen on Thursday. On the same day, she is due before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to be jailed by Judge Nolan.
And with both her scheduled committal to prison and her appeal to be heard in separate courtrooms at Dublin’s Criminal Courts of Justice on the same day – and both potentially starting at around the same time of the morning – she faces a race against time to get her appeal heard first.
She is not challenging her conviction, but her lawyers will argue that an 18-month custodial sentence is too severe and will try to stop her being sent to jail at all.
The unusual appeal comes amid growing concerns, regularly highlighted by the Mail, about inconsistent sentencing by judges.
In 2012, Dublin businessman Paul Begley got a six-year sentence from Judge Nolan for evading €1.6million in customs duty by having 1,000 tonnes of garlic from China labelled as apples.
The Court of Appeal later ruled that sentence was a mistake and reduced it to two years.
However, violent attackers such as ex-AIB banker Robert Jones, of Glenview Park, Tallaght, Dublin, who glassed a Trinity medical student in a nightclub in 2014, blinding him in one eye, have walked free with suspended terms.
A month ago, Judge Nolan imposed an 18-month prison sentence on Lisa Lynch despite pleas from her barrister Lorcan Staines for a non-custodial sentence in light of her circumstances.
AGL Logistics, which employed 70 staff, has since dissolved and Lynch’s home at Ballintubbert, Athy, Co. Kildare, is due for repossession in April, while she and her husband have applied for social housing. As of last month, Lynch was working for her brother-in-law earning €485 a week, while her husband, who still has health difficulties, was on a back-to-work scheme.
Judge Nolan accepted that she had no ‘base motives’ for her offending and was very unlikely to ever re-offend. She had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, surrendered herself to gardaí in late 2013 and cooperated fully with the force’s National Economic Crime Bureau.
She has been putting aside €50 a week towards compensating the multinational firm, it was heard last month. But her actions had involved a serious amount of duplicity, Judge Nolan said.
AGL had encountered serious cash flow problems between 2010 and 2013 before Lynch created 93 false invoices in the names of eight of her existing companies. As they were treated by Bibby as true invoices, €460,660 was advanced on foot of them. Some of that money was later repaid to Bibby in a way which allowed Lynch to improve cash flow and keep her own business going, it was heard.
The young woman had the ‘best of motives’ to keep the company going, the judge said. She was only spared Christmas in jail after the court heard she had yet to inform her children, aged three and seven, of her offending.
On that basis, Judge Nolan granted her a stay of execution on her punishment until January 11.
There is no guarantee that her last-minute appeal will in fact stop her being sent to prison, however.
She could be forced to begin her jail sentence before the week is out – and wait until a later date for the result of her appeal.
However, she is hoping to persuade three appeal judges to swiftly replace her custodial sentence with a suspended sentence this Thursday morning.
Her defence team arranged the unusual emergency appeal hearing with court officials before the courts closed for Christmas.
Lynch’s appeal hearing is due to get under way at around 10.30am on Thursday – and she will be hoping Judge Nolan will not require her to surrender herself to the Circuit Criminal Court before the afternoon session which starts at 2pm. If her appeal goes without hitches or delays, then a ruling could be given by lunchtime.
A legal source said: ‘With the appeal to be heard on the day of her committal [to jail], she at least has a chance. But it will be tight.’
Judge said she had no ‘base motives’ ‘She has a chance but it will be tight’