Insurance agent jailed over €2.5m fraud
A 42-year-old insurance agent who defrauded three insurance companies of €2.5m was today sentenced to four years in jail.
Noel Fitzpatrick set up a bogus company and was paid the money in commission for a pension scheme he set up on behalf of his non-existent employees.
He spent the €1.5m profit he made on an extravagant lifestyle which included €153,000 on cars, €105,000 on cash withdrawals, €100,000 on credit cards, €54,000 on jewellery, €46,000 on Druids Glen golf club membership and €11,000 on a stereo system and other home equipment.
At Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Catherine Delahunt said the only appropriate sentence was a custodial one.
“You embarked on these enterprises solely to fund a lavish lifestyle and in doing so you engaged in extensive duplicity and cunning,” she said.
“You are now as a result of your actions virtually unemployable in the financial world in which you once worked,” she said.
“On your own admission, you ruined not only yourself but your family’s life as well.”
Fitzpatrick, from St Gabriel’s, Johnstown Road, Cabinteely, Co Dublin, had pleaded guilty to seven charges of falsely pretending various people were applicants for pension schemes at Canada Life Ireland, Friends First Ireland and New Ireland Assurance on dates between July 2000 and July 2001.
He also pleaded guilty to a charge of securing a IR£400,000 loan from Anglo-Irish Bank and a charge of supplying false information to the Companies Office.
Judge Delahunt imposed a four year prison sentence on the charge of falsely obtaining the IR£400,000 loan and also imposed a series of sentences ranging from one to four years on the other counts, with some of them partly suspended for good behaviour.
She ruled that all the sentences would run concurrently and would be backdated to include the year that Fitzpatrick had already spent in custody.
Fitzpatrick stood in court, handcuffed to a garda, while the sentence was read out.
Dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and patterned tie, he stroked his jaw with his hand briefly when Judge Delahunt refused leave to appeal the severity of the sentence, but displayed no other reaction.
Judge Delahunt said he had engaged in scams of a limited lifespan: “Accordingly, the house of cards collapsed in a relatively short period of time.”
The court had heard at an earlier hearing that Fitzpatrick had defrauded €336,700 from Canada Life, €479,873 from New Ireland Assurance and €1,505,374 from Friends First after receiving commission for bogus applications for pension schemes.
When he could no longer afford to pay the pension contributions on the bogus scheme, the Irish Financial Regulator was contacted in September 2002 and the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation was called in to investigate.
She said she had taken account of his full co-operation with the Garda investigation, led by Inspector Denis Heneghan, his early plea of guilty and the fact that he had been in custody for over a year and had not been in a position to see his children.
She noted that Fitzpatrick had made some financial reparation to the insurance companies involved and ordered that €8,000 held in his name with Standard Life should be repaid to its rightful owner, Friends First.
Judge Delahunt said she was also taking into account the apparent ease with which he was able to carry out his activities without much checking from the financial institutions.
