Crime pays, but not for duo Keith and Lyndsey

WHATEVER about the sentence in the case of Cork’s own Bonnie and Clyde, aka Keith Flynn and Lyndsey Clarke who devised a labyrinthine system of identity theft that allowed them rip off a network of banks and credit unions frequently in disguise, it seems to me that the charges don’t quite fit their crime. True, facing 388 charges arising from a conspiracy to commit fraud sounds satisfyingly intimidating even for our pair of miscreant lawyers in the dock, but somehow it misses the mark.

For while Lyndsey and Keith are obviously a pair of thieving scoundrels and good riddance to them as they head off to the slammer, is not the bigger offence the fact that after all their efforts, ingenuity and derring-do, they made off with, at the very most, a lousy €390,000?

When their offices were raided, along with a cache of fake driving licences, bank cards and copies of passports, the sum of €94,000 was found in the safe.

Throw in a few far-flung holidays and luxury hotels and that’s all this pair of socalled criminal masterminds have to show for their efforts. Nothing you couldn’t have made flipping a few well-appointed apartments during the Tiger years.

TALK about lack of ambition. These small-time crooks must never have heard of Martin Cahill, whose heists involved millions of euro worth of diamonds and paintings. Or of Frank Abagnale, immortalised by Leo di Caprio in the brilliant Catch Me If You Can, who conned millions before he was 21 by posing as a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer.

I don’t want to glorify criminals any more than they are already in Hollywood but surely the golden rule is making the haul worth the risk? Lyndsey and Keith, right, disgraced themselves, lost their professional standing and liberty, are apart from their children and face a future of very reduced circumstances, and for what?

They could have earned masses more money had they applied

themselves to the law. Given how politicians are due for another pay rise, Lyndsey, who stood for the 2014 local elections for Fine Gael, could have climbed aboard the Leinster House gravy train had she slogged on local issues and built her reputation.

But rather than pursue two tried and tested routes to Easy Street, Keith and Lyndsey preferred to work in the shadows,

building fake profiles, buying forged documents off the internet and trawling the web for persons who looked sufficiently like them so that they could be matched with false names and addresses.

THEY copied and forged utilities bills, post office receipts and bought PPS numbers from homeless people. They scoured the property pages for houses for sale or rent and, posing as previous tenants, turned up at doors asking current residents if they’d inform them if letters arrived addressed to them. Invariably, people obliged, little suspecting that Lyndsey and Keith were the senders and that they were helping them acquire proof of another bogus identity. By the time their

criminal operation was rumbled, they were running 60 different identities and 80 bank accounts. Think of the effort that went into keeping those balls in the air, never losing track of each subterfuge and deceit, right down to keeping tabs on the wigs and costumes worn to each bank. All for an illicit nest-egg that could be made by honest graft in any number of ways.

The only explanation is that they were addicted to the thrills of their life of crime.

They must have got a kick running up bad debts or an adrenaline rush donning their disguises for every ATM withdrawal. A satisfied glow must have overcome them whenever they found a discarded utility bill or a binned receipt that could help in the manufacture of yet another dodgy persona.

But the colour has well and truly drained from their lives as they count down the days in their cells. They have a lot to berate themselves about, not least of which is why they ruined their lives for so little.