A 55-year-old Derry man who stole £30,000 from his late father to ‘fuel his gambling addiction’ was today jailed for six months.
Martin O’Brien, of Rossnagalliagh Park, was sentenced at Derry Crown Court for the theft of £30,000 of his father’s money, fraud by abuse of position and making and supplying articles for the use in fraud.
The offences took place between 2010 and 2013.
The court heard that O’Brien’s father’s health had been deteriorating having been diagnosed with dementia and suffered several strokes.
O’Brien, who is one of a family of four children, agreed with his siblings and acting on the advice of his father’s social worker, that it would be best for his father to go into a residential home.
Mr O’Brien Senior was moved into Greenhaw Nursing Home in summer 2010.
O’Brien then took over his father’s financial affairs from one of his brothers.
O’Brien made his other siblings sign a form to say that they agreed with him taking control of his father’s affairs, which they did.
Mr O’Brien Senior was on state benefits and only had a surplus of £40 a week after covering the cost of his nursing home.
His health deteriorated further in March 2013 and he was admitted to hospital.
The family were informed that he did not have long to live.
O’Brien arrived with his sister at the hospital to see their father and his brother, who had been with their father all night, left the room to get a cup of tea.
While O’Brien was alone with his sister, he admitted his father had no money left and that he had taken it all.
The two had an altercation and ‘there was no contact between the siblings while their father lay dying and during the subsequent wake and funeral’.
When enquiries were carried out, it emerged there had been £10,000 in O’Brien’s father’s Derry Credit Union account, in excess of £13,000 in the Pennyburn Credit Union account over £6,000 in his Post Office account.
When Mr O’Brien Senior died on April 26, 2013, there was only £7.18 in his Derry Credit Union account, £22.06 in the Pennyburn Credit Union account and nothing in his Post Office account.
O’Brien had changed a cash receipt from the nursing home from £32.76 to read £532.76 and obtained cash from the Pennyburn Credit Union through this fraud.
When interviewed by police, O’Brien claimed he had given money of his own won from gambling for his father to keep for him and said that with his father’s dementia worsening he may not have remembered it was given to him for safekeeping.
O’Brien claimed that the only way he could get the money was to draw it out of his father’s accounts.
He made allegations against his other siblings and said that what he was doing may have looked like stealing but a lot of it was getting his own money back.
On March 4, 2016, O’Brien was arraigned at Derry Crown Court where he pleaded not guilty but the court was informed there were discussions ongoing between the defence and prosecution and that there was a possibility the matter may be resolved.
He was re-arraigned on April 29, 2016, and a trial date was set for June.
Mark Reel, defence counsel, said that he accepted there was a clear breach of trust but said O’Brien was ‘a most unsuitable individual’ to take on the control of his father’s financial affairs as he had a long history of gambling and drinking.
However, his siblings had entrusted him with the role.
Judge Philip Babington said that O’Brien was intelligent but also has had ‘a severe gambling problem for most of his life’ and also abused alcohol.
He said that reports indicated that O’Brien stopped drinking and gambling two years ago and that he appears to have taken steps to address his addictions.
Judge Babington said that O’Brien had betrayed the trust of his siblings and ‘took advantage of his father’s inability to look after himself’.
“This behaviour went on for nearly three years and was very cruelly brought to light as his father lay dying in hospital,” he said.
“The money was used to fuel his gambling addiction and although he says he was always hoping to pay the money back that, of course, was a hopeless hope.
“His late father really knew nothing about what he had done and presumably any wishes expressed in his will were essentially thwarted.”
Judge Babington said that O’Brien had destroyed his relationship with his siblings and that there was ‘no hope of reimbursement’.
O’Brien was given a 12 month sentence with six months to be spent in prison and the other six out on licence.
He must also participate in a programme to examine his problem solving and consequential skills. O’Brien was also ordered to pay an offender levy of £25.
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