Two men involved in an international credit card scam were sentenced to five years imprisonment on 16 counts of fraud at Cork Circuit Criminal Court yesterday.
Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin sentenced the two British nationals for their part in a counterfeiting operation last June.
Initially there were three men with London addresses before the court - Mohammed Majid (38), Jones Road; Ali Raza (48), North Green, Leyton, and Mohammed Kahleed (25), Gilbey's Yard, Oval Road.
Ali Raza, who was on bail, disappeared on day three of the trial and is thought to be hiding in Britain. He will be sentenced when he is apprehended and transferred back to Ireland.
All three men had pleaded not guilty to charges under the Theft and Fraud Offences Act. On Thursday the men were found guilty unanimously on all counts.
Gardaí believe the men were part of an east London crime gang specialising in credit card fraud.
Some of the charges related to being in possession of an electronic device capable of reading a plastic payment card. Other charges related to the use of "any machine" specially designed for the manufacture of a "false instrument".
The court heard that the two men sentenced yesterday had extensive previous convictions for fraud and theft, including prison sentences for credit card scams in Britain.
The men arrived in Cork airport from Gatwick at 4pm on June 2nd last. They travelled to a house at Elmvale Avenue, Wilton, Cork city. They stayed there that night and the following day they started the process of making forged credit cards, the court was told.
At 8pm on June 3rd, gardaí stopped a black four-wheel-drive near the Sarsfield roundabout in Wilton. Inside the vehicle they found a male and female, and when a search was carried out the detectives discovered cannabis.
They arrested the male and brought him to Togher Garda station, where he gave gardaí permission to search his home at Elmvale Avenue.
When they arrived at the location they could see, through a livingroom window, a number of men. Kahleed was operating a laptop and Majid was writing on paper. The gardaí entered the house, where there was a laptop, a credit card reader and a large amount of paraphernalia.
The equipment discovered had the potential to make 450 credit cards and 87 such cards had been found in the house.
Inquiries in the UK revealed the nature of the fraud. All the credit card details had been "skimmed" from an ATM in Nottingham in April. These included pin numbers and other information. Gardaí believe this was carried out to frustrate police forces in Ireland and Britain. It was also carried out on a bank holiday weekend so that they would have an extra day before banks opened.
It was estimated €25,000 had been stolen from bank accounts before the men's operation was shut down. Money had been taken from accounts in Killarney and Patrick Street in Cork.
Det Sgt O'Sullivan said both men were career criminals who had served prison sentences in the UK.