Retired economist spared jail for five-year pension scam
Liliana Etropolska with an address at Kiltegan Crescent, Rochestown Road, Cork, was given an 18-month jail sentence suspended on condition that she would leave Ireland within seven days.
Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin said the only reason the 70-year-old was not getting a prison sentence was because she had brought the full amount of €45,000 to court to compensate the State for everything she stole.
“This was a conscious, deliberate and ongoing fraud in which she was fully involved. Because she recompensed the State I will measure a sentence at 18 months suspended,” the judge said.
The judge directed gardaí to return the accused woman’s passport which she previously handed up as a condition of her bail. As well as leaving here within seven days it is a condition of the suspension of the sentence that she would not return to Ireland for five years.
The 70-year-old was arrested on Friday, March 18, by Garda Kevin Hefffernan at Cork Airport and brought before a special sitting of Cork District Court that weekend.
Garda Heffernan, who is on secondment to the Department of Social Protection, testified yesterday at Cork Circuit Criminal Court that the accused came to Ireland in January 2011 as her son was married and living in Cork. She obtained a PPS number in January 2011 and told the authorities she was residing here full time. However, she returned to live in Bulgaria after securing the PPS number.
She returned just before her 66th birthday and applied for non-contributory pension which she was given. She left Ireland a week later but she had stated she would be residing permanently in Ireland. She provided documentation to support her claim that she was resident here full time.
The scam came to light when social welfare inspector, Fergus McCarthy, carried out a check on her entitlement and called to the address given by the accused. The owner of the house knew the accused but said she was not living there permanently.
Gardaí were alerted and flight manifests from Aer Lingus were examined for the five-year period. These showed that she flew in a week before applying for her PPS number and flew out a week later and a similar pattern around the time she applied for the pension which was paid into an AIB bank account. The records showed that in 2012 she spent 40 days in Ireland.
Sinead Behan said the matter had been very stressful for the 70-year-old who had health problems. She said the money was used to pay her son’s mortgage.
Judge Ó Donnabháin said he did not sympathise with the defendant for the stress she was feeling as it essentially emanated from being caught, adding she would have claimed the pension forever had she not been caught.
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