Man who stole €14k was stressed over child porn charges
A KERRY man who stole over €14,000 from his employer while suffering “considerable stress” as he waited to be charged for child pornography offences has been jailed for two and a half years.
Formerly of Galtymore Park, Drimnagh, Dublin and originally from Killarney, former Motor Tax Office employee John O’Donoghue (38) is currently serving a four year sentence with the final two years suspended after being sentenced last March for possession and distribution of child pornography.
Mr O’Donoghue had made admissions to gardaí in 2012 about those allegations but had not yet been charged at the time of the thefts in 2017 due to a five year wait in having his computer analysed.
Mr O’Donoghue pleaded guilty to representative counts of theft and of false accounting at the Motor Tax Office, Blackhall Walk, Smithfield, on dates between March and August 2017. Judge Pauline Codd said the theft offences showed considerable premeditation and imposed a four year sentence and suspended the final 18 months.
The offences came to light when a member of the public who Mr O’Donoghue had dealt with, returned to the office to query an amount she had paid in motor tax arrears and senior staff were alerted to irregularities.
A review of CCTV revealed O’Donoghue had put the money the customer paid in arrears into his pocket and circumvented the computer system to balance the tills.
He also complied false and misleading cashier summary and lodgement sheets to avoid detection. The subsequent investigation found 127 similar transactions amounting to a total of €14,293 stolen.
Mr Moran told Judge Codd that O’Donoghue had been suffering seriously with stress and anxiety at the time of these offences. He had made admissions to the child pornography charges but had not been charged or sentenced as it took five years for his computer to be analysed by gardaí.
He said Mr O’Donoghue had not been funding a lavish lifestyle and had “lost every friend he ever had” as a result of the child pornography charges.