A mother-of-four from west Belfast was spared an immediate jail sentence today after she admitted being a 'mule' in a financial scam.
Danielle O'Halloran was handed a 12-month sentence, which was suspended for two years, after a crown court judge deemed that she was vulnerable and was used by more sinister elements.
The 28-year-old, from Colinward Street, wept as Judge Stephen Fowler QC suspended her sentence, but told her: "If you become involved in something like this again and you appear before me, unfortunately you will go to jail."
O'Halloran admitted seven offences dating back to December 2017, including transferring criminal property and fraud by false representation, at Belfast Crown Court.
Crown barrister Gareth Purvis said that on December 5, 2017 the director of a business in England reported a suspected fraud to police, and said he had received a call from a man with a Northern Irish accent who said he was calling from Lloyds Bank.
Information was given to the caller, and as a result £180,000 was removed from the company's account via fraudulent online activity the following day.
Mr Purvis said that while most of the money was subsequently re-funded to the company by Lloyds Bank, the latter suffered a loss of around £165,000 in the scam.
Turning to O'Halloran's role, the prosecutor said that on December 6, 2017 she received two money deposits into her bank account totalling £20,000. Two days later, she withdrew the money in euros from five different outlets including Thomas Cook and The Money Shop which she then handed over to a man not before the court.
When she was later arrested, O'Halloran made the case that she was approached in Belfast by a male she knew who asked if she would receive the money, then transfer the funds via euro withdrawals.
She also claimed this man told her she would be contacted when the money was in her account. O'Halloran said she sent a Facebook message to this man on December 5 saying she no longer wanted to be involved - but in the following days she received a call from someone she didn't know who told her what to do.
O'Halloran - who was pregnant at the time - said when she told this caller she didn't want to be involved, she was threatened and told "there will be consequences".
Mr Purvis said that after withdrawing the euros on December 8, O'Halloran met a man in Smithfield, where she handed the money over.
O'Halloran claimed she didn't receive any payment and Mr Purvis said: "She was effectively a mule at the bottom of the ladder, used by others not before the court. There is no evidence she benefitted, and there is no evidence of a lavish lifestyle."
Defence barrister Jonathan O'Connor revealed that O'Halloran had no criminal record and there had been no further offending since December 2017.
Passing sentence, Judge Fowler said that while the offending was serious enough to warrant a jail term, he was going to suspend the sentence.
