Man sold €27k worth of bogus holidays to friends

A man who stole over €27,000 from friends and acquaintances by selling them bogus package holidays has been remanded on bail pending sentence in February.

Aaron Weinrib, aged 37, of Cambridge Villas, Rathmines, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to eight sample charges of theft and fraud on dates between Jun and Dec 2010.

The court heard he had been selling three different holiday packages to New York, Las Vegas and Cape Town while claiming to be an agent for tour operator Top Flight. His defence counsel said he used the money to keep up with “his cocaine lifestyle”, having lost his job.

Detective Garda Conor Bresnan told Michael Bowman BL, prosecuting that gardaí were contacted in Nov 2010 by two men who claimed that Weinrib had sold them package holidays.

One man had paid €3,200 for four nights for four people in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, while the other had paid €550 for a two-night stay in New York.

Both men received some documentation bearing the Top Flight logo from Weinrib, but later discovered that there was no such holiday reserved for them.

Weinrib admitted that he took bank drafts from the men to cover the cost of the holidays. He confirmed the holidays were never booked and said he had intended to refund them.

“I did intend to run a promotion to honour them but it snowballed,” Weinrib told gardaí.

He admitted that he had never worked for Top Flight and that the documentation was a forgery.

During a search of Weinrib’s apartment gardaí discovered a list of people and contact details and evidence on his computer of the documents generated with the Top Flight logo.

Weinrib later admitted that other friends and acquaintances had been sold bogus holidays. He claimed that some had been refunded but told gardaí it was “a right fucking mess”.

Weinrib sold these packages, including a holiday worth €1,100 for the Mandela Rhodes Place hotel in Cape Town, to 20 people. He made €27,600 in the scam.

Det Gda Bresnan agreed with Lorcan Stains BL, defending, that his client was co-operative with the investigation and had no previous convictions.

He accepted that it had not been a complicated offence and it was only “a matter of time” before the gardaí would have been alerted.

Mr Staines said Weinrib had started to “engage in cocaine taking and the cocaine lifestyle” and subsequently lost his job.

He was embarrassed by that fact and tried to “keep up with the lifestyle but didn’t have the pay cheque to match it”.

Judge Mary Ellen Ring adjourned the case to Feb for sentence after acknowledging that Weinrib intends to use half of his current weekly wage of €400 to refund his victims.