A village postmaster conned thousands of euro out of the Department of Agriculture by making bogus claims for animal grants and then intercepted the letters with the cheques.
Eunan O'Donnell claimed a series of payments for several years going back to April 1992, Donegal Circuit Court was told.
He claimed sheep headage payments in the name of a neighbour and opened the envelopes with the cheques himself and cashed them as they passed through his post office at Kilraine, Glenties, Co Donegal.
Judge John O'Hagan heard the scam was exposed after the department made unannounced checks of a claim for payments made in the name of Tony Scott on December 18th, 2003.
The court heard the department selects 10 per cent of all grant applications every year for announced inspections to check whether the animals on the land tallies with the number in the claims.
When inspectors arrived on Mr Scott's land and found the numbers didn't match, and herd tags were missing, Mr Scott said he never applied for any headage grants. Gardaí launched an investigation. Det John Gallagher said the cheques made out to Mr Scott totalled €14,134.44. They arrived at Kilraine Post Office addressed to Mr Scott at Upper Kilraine although he lived at another address.
O'Donnell intercepted the cheques. "Mr Scott never saw them", the detective added.
When arrested in October, 2004, O'Donnell admitted the offences and returned two uncashed cheques. He said he believed Mr Scott was aware of what he was doing. But "in the cold light of day" O'Donnell conceded he didn't actually tell Mr Scott what he was doing.
O'Donnell, (65) with a grown-up family, admitted a sample 15 charges from a total of 113 preferred against him. They included fraud, false pretences, and postal offences.
He told the court he looked after Mr Scott's sheep as well as his own by arrangement on Mr Scott's land.
He didn't think he was doing wrong in making claims in the other man's name as he paid him a share of the profits at the end of the year.
The court heard an Post shut down the post office when O'Donnell, who operated it for 30 years, reported his offences to them. A shop he operated on the same premises shut down a year later because it could not survive without the post office.
He offered his "life savings" - €8,000 - in compensation to the department.
Judge O'Hagan said he could not accept that an "articulate, intelligent, literate" person did not know he was doing wrong when he deliberately falsified documents when he spent his life helping others fill out forms.
The judge ordered the €8,000 to be paid to the department. He adjourned the hearing to the next court term for probation reports.