Solicitor arrested in probe into property deeds scam

A SOLICITOR who was formerly under threat from gangland criminal Alan Wilson was arrested as part of a major probe into the forgery of property deeds.

The solicitor is due to be sentenced in a separate fraud case in July at Dublin Circuit Court after he admitted six sample charges of obtaining money by false pretences at a court sitting last January.

He was arrested at his Rathmines home yesterday morning and brought to Terenure garda station, where he was still being quizzed last night.

He has been the focus of a lengthy investigation by the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB) which was alerted that “forged deeds in relation to two properties were sent into the Property Registration Office”.

“Gardaí are investigating if this individual was the solicitor who acted for criminals who made over €200,000 in relation to these properties which are located on the northside and the southside of Dublin,” a senior source explained.

“This case is about the re-registering of vacant properties in the city. The question is how involved was the solicitor in this enterprise.

“It is a complex case that has been ongoing for months,” the source added.

The solicitor was arrested in 2009 for withholding information in relation to the murder of Romanian teenager Marioara Rostas.

The 18-year-old victim was abducted from a street in the capital’s south inner city on January 6, 2008, but her body was not found for four years.

Alan Wilson (41) was cleared by a jury of murder in July, 2014.

Wilson, from the south inner city, is currently serving six years for plotting an intercepted murder attempt on Gary Hanley in November, 2017, as part of the Hutch/Kinahan feud.

The solicitor who was arrested by fraud squad detectives yesterday was previously “well known” to Wilson but was never a suspect in the Marioara murder. He was released without charge after being questioned in October, 2009, over withholding information about it.