Travel agent found guilty of stealing from a charity
A 66-year-old man has been found guilty of stealing over €18,600 from a charity he set up to send terminally-ill children to Lapland.
John Murphy of Church Road, Killiney, Co. Dublin was remanded in custody and is due to be sentenced next week.
After just 42 minutes of deliberations, the jury came back with guilty verdicts on all four counts of theft.
They related to four cheques lodged into his personal account from The Children to Lapland Appeal – a charity he set up in 1987.
One of the directors who signed the cheques said he was “horrified” when he heard what happened and told Gardai he believed it amounted to fraud.
His defence claimed his personal account was also used for his business United Travel, which used to subsidise the charity.
The court heard the charity owed United Travel €69,000 at the end of 2009 – a few months before the offences took place.
The court heard Mr. Murphy is in remission from cancer and has a sister who is dependent on him, but despite his barrister’s plea for him to remain on bail, Judge Patrick McCartan remanded him in custody ahead of his sentence hearing next week.
