Taxi driver (45) gets suspended sentence after stealing €550 from customer

A taxi driver who stole from a customer after he kept her bank card, having accepted it as a payment for a fare, has received a two-and-half-year suspended sentence.

Patrick Lyons (45) accepted the card from the customer after she and her friend hailed down his taxi to return home from a night out.

When the woman asked for the card back, Lyons said he had already given it back to her before he later withdrew €550 from the woman’s account.

Lyons of Ventry Road, Cabra West, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to theft from the woman on December 12th, 2018.

The court heard Lyons has previous District Court convictions for theft from between December 2017 and August 2018 for similar offences of withdrawing money from the accounts of customers using cards they had given him to make payments.

Judge Karen O’Connor accepted that prior to these offences Lyons had not come to garda attention but had developed a drug addiction, and came under pressure to pay back a debt he had built up.

The judge acknowledged that Lyons had €500 to compensate the woman and had already paid back €3,800 in relation to those cases that had been dealt with in the District Court.

Judge O’Connor said it would not be appropriate to sentence Lyons on matters for which he has already received a sentence, before she acknowledged that she was dealing with one incident of theft.

The judge described the offence as “devious and unpleasant” and added “he used his position as a taxi driver to steal from customers”. She accepted he is now drug free and making good progress.

Judge O’Connor suspended a two-and-half-year sentence in full, on strict conditions, after she said she had decided to give Lyons one final chance.

She said she had taken time to consider the case. “He has been remanded in custody by me to see the inside of the prison,” Judge O’Connor said, before adding that Lyons would find himself if he re-offends.