A pensioner who defrauded people out of thousands of pounds by selling more than 20,000 forged Mass cards was spared jail today because of his wife's illness.
Denis Frazer (65) of Balbane Pass in the Creggan area of Derry was given two years' jail suspended for two years on each of six charges involving his scam, which spread over 14 years.
He sold 23,400 forged Mass cards for £1 each to five elderly people who innocently acted as intermediaries selling on the cards to those who were bereaved or those seeking to comfort the bereaved.
Mass cards are normally signed by a priest and sent to bereaved families. A sum of money is paid for the card and Masses are said for the deceased person.
Mr Frazer's fraud started when the Co Donegal priest who signed Mass cards for him died and Mr Frazer decided to carry on selling them by stamping the priest's name on them himself.
Judge Desmond Marrinan said: “There are certain standards of society and it seems to me what this man did was on the meanest possible level.”
He said it was not so much the money involved, single pounds paid out by possibly many hundreds of people, so much as the “incalculable sadness and sense of loss and betrayal” that Mr Frazer had caused.
He said there was a “loss of the spiritual dimension” and commented that Mr Frazer “doesn't have insight into the depth of hurt he had caused”.
He said it was clear from a report of an eminent clinical psychologist that he had not committed his crimes for personal financial gain so much as to buy attention.
But the judge said Mr Frazer, who suffers from angina and diabetes, had a seriously ill wife and was her sole carer.
“Putting it bluntly Mr Frazer if I sentence you to prison, which you richly deserve, I am going to be adding a huge punishment for your wife because she is going to have to find another primary carer.”
Instead he gave him the suspended sentences, to run concurrently, and warned that if he appeared in court again on any other offences he would be brought back before the judge and sent to prison.
PA