A judge said yesterday in sentencing a 46-year-old former Co Carlow bank official to two years' imprisonment for defrauding a bank and its customers of £288,285 that the defendant had been guilty of "a monumental breach of trust".
Sean Kavanagh of Monacurragh, Carlow, received the sentence from Judge Pat McCartan at a special sitting of Carlow Circuit Court.
He had pleaded guilty in February to 27 charges from an original indictment of 230.
The charges covered five of embezzlement, three of forgery, five of false pretences and 14 of larceny between 1989 and 1997 at the Bank of Ireland, Bagenalstown.
At the February sitting the court heard that Kavanagh's modus operandi had been to advise customers, often elderly people, to transfer money from savings accounts to accounts with higher interest.
He set up a bank within a bank, but it was completely fictitious. The people defrauded had paper indicating they had assets with the bank but in reality Kavanagh had taken their money for his own purposes.
In imposing sentence the judge said he was sending a clear message to others that a custodial sentence was inevitable for anyone who might engage in this type of activity in the future.