Cameroonian mother remanded in €105k social welfare fraud case

A mother-of-four was remanded in custody until December 18 yesterday for fraudulently claiming €105,000 in social welfare in Cork over a six-year period.

She will be sentenced on that date. The matter had been adjourned to see what steps could be taken for her to have her children minded when she was in prison.

Jane Anne Rothwell, defending, said the husband of the accused, Lydie Kana, would be minding them but she could not say how that would work out. Ms Rothwell had previously stated the accused saw herself as effectively minding the children almost as a single mother.

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin said the case was beginning to look like the perfect crime in that, “the perpetrator is found but cannot be punished”. Ms Rothwell said she had a duty to set out the background circumstances of the accused at the sentencing hearing.

The judge remanded Kana in custody until December 18 for further inquiries to be made about these issues.

Kana, aged 39, of 16 Copperhill, Ballintemple, Cork, denied the social welfare fraud. But 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.

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”.

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 period.