PA stole €1.1m from bosses over 14 years

A PERSONAL assistant stole more than €1m from her employers over a 14-year period by fraudulently lodging their cheques to her personal bank account, a court has heard.

Siobhan Maguire (47) “dissipated” the money over the years, paying her mortgage, going on holidays and supporting her children.

Maguire, of The Brambles, Skerries, Dublin, pleaded guilty to 32 sample theft and fraud charges related to lodgment of 660 cheques to her bank account on dates between 2001 and 2015.

She had been sent forward to Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for sentencing after entering signed guilty pleas in the district court. Maguire has no previous convictions.

The total theft amounted to €1,187,616. Maguire’s former employers have been partially reimbursed by banks and did not wish to make victim impact statements.

The total outstanding loss is now approximately €325,000, Garda Stephen Faulkner told the court. Judge Patricia Ryan adjourned sentencing until Thursday and remanded Maguire on bail.

Gda Faulkner told Maurice Coffey BL, prosecuting, that Maguire worked as a shared secretary and personal assistant to two professional people at offices in Church Street, Dublin, and began employment there in May 2001.

He said part of her role, over the 14 years of her employment, was to lodge cheques into the business accounts of the two men. He said that during this time she also lodged 660 of these cheques, which she had falsely endorsed on the back, to her own personal account.

The money had been subsequently taken from her account in cash withdrawals and gardaí were unable to trace it.

He said the fraud came to light in January 2015 after a bank employee became suspicious of a number of cheques Maguire lodged to her own account using self-service machines at Bank of Ireland in Smithfield.