The US Secret Service helped investigate to a multimillion dollar bank draft fraud allegedly operating from a Dublin office, a jury in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court trial has heard. Mr Terry Smith, owner of the American Plumbing Company in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said he went to the Secret Service to tell them about a $32 million bank draft he was to receive from a company called World Wide Clearing and Finance.
He has told the jury that World Wide Clearing and Finance had claimed he would receive $4 million from a $32 million bank draft if he registered his company as having completed a Nigerian housing project. Mr Smith said yesterday that the secret service passed the information to the Garda, who took up the inquiry. He met a secret service agent named Wayne Presley and told him he went to Ireland to collect the $32 million bank draft but discovered that he could not collect the money until he paid $2 million to finish the Nigerian housing project. He later discovered that the housing project did not exist.
Mr Smith said Mr Presley met Det Garda Ronan Galligan, who came to Baton Rouge to investigate the case. The three of them watched video stills of Mr Smith and two other men entering a bank in Terenure, Dublin, to collect the $32 million bank draft.
The two other men had introduced themselves as "David Baker" and "Richard Holborn" when Mr Smith met them at World Wide Clearing and Finance's office.
The prosecution alleges that these two men were really two of the accused, Mr Obiora Uzodike and Mr Thomas O'Brien. Mr Smith told Mr Diarmaid McGuinness SC, for Mr Uzodike, in continued cross-examination, that he was "pretty sure World Wide Clearing and Finance was running a scam" when he came to Ireland to collect his purported $4 million pay-out.
He said he was cautious and knew that they could not defraud him because he wasn't going to pay out any money to them.
Mr Smith denied Mr McGuinness's suggestion that he himself was trying to defraud the Nigerian government out of millions of dollars.
The jury has heard the prosecution allege that Mr Uzodike and Mr O'Brien had brought Mr Smith to the Terenure branch as part of the plan to defraud him of $2 million. Mr Henry Hodgson, a business centre manager, said he rented out an office suite to World Wide Clearing and Finance at 126 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin. He met a "Mr Holborn", who was white, in his 50s "or thereabouts", and was short, plump and wore glasses, during the second week of the letting.
Mr Hodgson agreed with Mr Martin Giblin SC, for Mr O'Brien, that "Mr Holborn" appeared to be using the office "in the normal way" that one would expect.
Ms Sonia Foley, a senior regulator at the Central Bank, said that World Wide Clearing and Finance had never been registered as a finance company with the Central Bank, as it was required to do under the 1995 Investment Intermediary Act.
The five accused have pleaded not guilty to attempting to defraud Heinz Althoff by forming a fraudulent company. The offence also includes forging or counterfeiting US dollar drafts in large amounts. The five are also charged over claims that they had bank drafts in their possession worth $32,000,000 and seeking $2 million from Terry Smith in exchange for them. Mr O'Brien, Mr Folkes, Mr Obumneme and Mr Uzodike are also charged with trying to obtain money by false pretences.
The trial continues.