The fraud squad says people in Carlow and Kilkenny are being caught up in all kinds of online scams, including some who’ve been conned into becoming money mules.
The Garda Economic Crime Bureau spoke at this week’s Kilkenny Joint Policing Committee meeting.
It was the first time they made a presentation to any JPC in the country and came about after the sharp rise of online scams locally during the pandemic.
Money mules are people who’ve been conned or convince to allow someone else to lodge money into their bank accounts usually for money laundering by organised crime gangs.
Chair of the JPC Cllr Pat Fitzpatrick told KCLR News “Young people, in particular, are being offered money to help out, that someone needs money to go into their account and sit in their account for a period of time and they’re being offered substantial money to do that and they find that there’s substantial money then put into their account and suddenly it’s a job to get it out and the problem is that it belongs to organised crime and you’re then part of a crime”.
He adds “There has been investigations and there has been follow-ups and certainly it’s something that they want to draw to the public’s attention to be very careful and to be mindful that young people can get very easily wrapped up in this and it can become very, very serious very quickly and we are talking about organised crime”.
And Cllr Fitzpatrick also says the issue’s increasing locally, noting “In 2020 it was 45 and in 2021 to date, it’s already at 103 online fraud investigations that are happening at this moment”.
