Cameroonian Mum-of-4 faces jail for €105k welfare fraud

A nurse from Cameroon accused of fraudulently claiming €105,000 in social welfare in Cork over a six-year period was found guilty of what the prosecution called crimes of greed yesterday.

Lydie Kana, aged 39, of 16 Copperhill, Ballintemple, Cork, denied the fraud.

However, a jury of nine women and three men at Cork Circuit Criminal Court returned unanimous guilty verdicts on 18 of the 20 sample charges against her.

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin adjourned sentencing until November 24 and warned of some element of a custodial sentence. He said he was aware Kana had four children but he told defence lawyers: “Leave the Stradivarius at home.”

The judge said: “This was a very deliberate well-organised crime of fraud. And the amounts are enormous. There has to be a sentence part of which has to be a deterrent.”

The judge said the fact that she had four young children was a huge factor but that all that he got from the defendant during the trial was her talking about “my entitlements”.

Addressing the jury in advance of their deliberations yesterday, prosecution barrister Pearse Sreenan said: “The director’s view is that in effect this was an offence of greed. If she had disclosed her husband was working and if his income was low she would still have been entitled to something but she denied he was working at all. And she has shown absolutely no remorse.”

Defence senior counsel James O’Mahony said: “You cannot have a criminal offence without the guilty mind. There has to be intention. The charge is that she knowingly made statements. In other words that she had the guilty mind, that she knew it.”

Kana was convicted of knowingly making false declarations for the purpose of establishing entitlement to supplementary welfare allowances in the period December 11, 2006, to August 4, 2013, at Ballintemple post office and sample theft counts relating to the same six-year.