A former estate agent behind a €1.6 million 'Ponzi' scheme has lost an appeal against his six year jail sentence.
Eamonn Kelly (49) duped 25 investors from Dublin, Wexford and Donegal, including some who were ‘effectively left in penury’ after they trusted him with large redundancy payments.
The businessman, who previously ran a RE/MAX Auctioneers, told investors that they could make €15,000 profit on a €50,000 investment within six months, if they purchased sites he claimed he had identified in the UK.
He subsequently used funds from later investors to repay profits to the early investors to encourage them to re-invest in the scheme.
Investments ranged from €10,000 to €100,000.
To add credibility to the scheme, the father of four from Decies Road, Ballyfermot in Dublin, forged the signature of well-known solicitor Gerald Keane and provided potential investors with a bogus letter from Ulster Bank in Crumlin, stating that he had €4.6 million on deposit in an account there.
A client of Ulster Bank queried the letter and a garda fraud investigation commenced.
Eamonn Kelly co-operated fully with the garda probe and subsequently pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to a number of sample charges of theft, one of producing a false instrument and one of forgery on dates between October 2007 and February 2010.
Approximately €480,000 was seized and became the subject of a High Court freezing order. €400,000 was returned to investors, leaving losses of around €600,000.
He was given a six year jail sentence last year.
At today's appeal hearing, his barrister Sean Gillane SC argued that the sentencing judge had erred in imposing consecutive sentences of four years and two years for what was effectively a single episode of offending.
He argued there is a long standing tendency towards concurrent sentencing and he compared the case to that of garlic importer Paul Begley whose six year sentence for a €1.6 million tax scam was cut to 2 years on appeal.
However the Court of Criminal Appeal has found the circumstances in this case to be very different to that of Begley's, where the prosecution relied almost entirely on the businessman's admissions.
It was also pointed out by Kerida Naidoo BL for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) that Paul Begley had returned all the money he owed.
The 3-judge court has dismissed Eamonn Kelly's appeal and upheld his sentence as ‘fair and proportionate’ for ‘serious crimes, involving a breach of trust, deception over a long period of time and causing severe losses to some parties’.
It has found the sentencing judge took into account all the relevant mitigating factors. The court said it could not disregard the fact that some of Kelly's victims were 'small people who are extremely financially vulnerable'.
