A Longford woman has been found guilty of conspiring to defraud the Guardian PMPA insurance company by claiming she was in a car accident.
Jacqueline Kinlan (36), from Ballagh, Newtown Forbes, was yesterday convicted on the 11th day of her trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court after the jury had deliberated for nearly five hours, spending Wednesday night in a hotel.
She had pleaded not guilty that on diverse dates between March 1st, 1994 and January 1st, 1995 she conspired with others to defraud the company by pretending that a genuine car accident had occurred on March 17th, 1994.
Judge Frank O'Donnell remanded her on continuing bail for sentence on May 19th, after being told the mother-of-two had to make arrangements regarding her young children.
The jury had earlier convicted retired Roscommon garda Desmond McGonigle on Wednesday night of the same offence arising out of a separate car accident.
During the course of the trial the jury heard that Kinlan claimed she was driving a Peugeot 405 Estate, 93-LD-341, when she skidded into the back of another car driven by midlands farmer John Manning on March 17th, 1994.
Ms Kinlan signed a form for the Guardian PMPA company admitting liability for the accident and they paid out in total £31,297 in damages for both vehicles and personal injuries to Mr Manning.
The court was told both cars were examined by a crash expert for Guardian PMPA and were dealt with as write-offs.
A handwriting expert from the Garda Technical Bureau told the trial that he was given five documents, all irrelevant to the case, from the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation, with the working assumption that they were all written by Longford garage proprietor Michael Byrne.
The jury were told that Byrne, Kinlan's brother-in-law, was the central figure in the conspiracy and was serving a five-year sentence for car insurance-related fraud.
The officer said that some time later he received two documents surrounding the alleged accident involving Kinlan. One of the documents was an admission of liability with Kinlan's signature and the second was the accident report form.
These two documents were compared with the five earlier documents written by Byrne and the witness said the handwriting was very similar.