‘I’ll never forget him being fingerprinted in his school uniform’
STANDING in a Garda station watching his young teenage son being fingerprinted and getting his photograph taken while wearing his school uniform is a day Paul will never forget.
And when Paul’s son Cormac asked could his dad accompany him into the holding cell, it was enough to break his heart.
Cormac had been arrested as part of an investigation into financial fraud. His bank card and details had been used to hold the funds of a four-figure fraud on an elderly person. He had become what gardaí call a ‘money mule’. “It was like a sledgehammer blow to us all. It was surreal. Cormac is a good lad and had never been in any trouble before. So to have the guards at the gate was a real shock,” Paul said.
“Cormac had been approached by a lad he knew and asked if he would part with his bank card and account details. He was told there would be a few hundred euro coming his way, and somehow, he naively thought it would be OK because nobody was getting hurt. Or maybe he felt pressured. We don’t know for sure.
“This guy told him a rehearsed line he could use to explain why his card disappeared. He told him to tell us he had lost his card, and then had received a phone call from his bank asking for his account details and had given them. This story would be used as his ‘cover’ if there was questions asked.
“He was given this spiel, and when he told us he had lost his card, and that someone had rang him saying they were from his bank asking for the account details, he had given them out.
“We believed him, and thinking he might have been the victim of a fraud, a relation who works in a bank advised us to go to the gardaí and report it, so we did,” he added.
“But then when we were leaving the house one morning to bring Cormac
to school, there were two gardaí at the gate.
“They asked me if I was Cormac’s dad, and that’s when it hit me like a sledgehammer that something was wrong. We were taken down to the Garda station. I thought we might be there for an hour or two, answer some questions, and be on our way. But we were there for the day. I will never forget seeing Cormac being fingerprinted and photographed in his school uniform. He wanted me to come into the cell with him, that’s how innocent he was. He was still a child,” Paul said.
Cormac’s card had been used to store money stolen from the account of an elderly person who was the victim of a fraud. Gardaí had CCTV footage of a group of people who Cormac does not know using his card to withdraw the money from his account at ATMs.
“We don’t know what will happen. We don’t know if Cormac will get a criminal record. Maybe this will follow him through his future,” said Paul.
“My advice to all parents, whether you think your child is capable of being lured into this type of thing or not, is to sit them down and explain to them that they should never share their bank details with anyone, there is no such thing as easy money, and there are victims in these crimes.”