{"id":162715,"date":"2025-11-04T17:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T17:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/162715\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T17:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T17:44:08","slug":"romanian-couple-stole-over-100k-from-social-welfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/162715\/","title":{"rendered":"Romanian couple stole over 100K from social welfare"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Romanian couple who defrauded the Department of Social Protection of well over \u20ac100,000 have been jailed for 18 months each.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cristan Turbat (39) and his Dorina Turbat (41) of Moyglare Village, Maynooth, Co Kildare pleaded guilty to 500 counts of theft in relation to the monies which were paid out in jobseekers\u2019 allowance, family income support , and rent support payments totalling \u20ac114,565.14.<\/p>\n

When the scheme was rumbled the pair fled to Roman, but were returned to Ireland on a European arrest warrant.<\/p>\n

Over a period of approximately 4 years Dorina Turbet, who personally made the fraudulent claims, benefited in the amounts of \u20ac64,504.30 in jobseeker\u2019s allowance, \u20ac39,483.20 in rent support, and \u20ac10,578 in family income support all being the property of the Department of Social Protection.<\/p>\n

The monies were stolen from AIB Mainstreet Lucan, Co. Dublin as well as Intreo Office Clondalkin in multiple payments of \u20ac302.90,<\/p>\n

\u20ac671.20, \u20ac776.70, and \u20ac204.90.<\/p>\n

The court heard that Dorina Turbat made a claim for Jobseeker\u2019s Allowance but after learning that she was not entitled to same as her husband was working, made a new claim falsely stating that he was now unemployed.<\/p>\n

During the period of the fraudulently obtained payments. Cristan Turbat was working for Michael McMahon using the name of his wife\u2019s brother.<\/p>\n

In July 2018, the Intreo Office in Clondalkin received information that Christian was working for the said company which led to an investigation being launched.<\/p>\n

The court heard that officials from the Intreo office approached Garda\u00ed with information gathered about the couple which led investigating officers to gain access to the bank records of Ms. Turbat\u2019s brother.<\/p>\n

CCTV from Circle K, Clondalkin, as well as other information, was used to confirm that Cristan Turbat was accessing an account in the name of his brother in law and was in control of this account.<\/p>\n

Garda\u00ed also approached customers of Michael McMahon Construction and showed them photos of Turbat which they recognised as \u201cCris\u201d who had worked on refurbishment jobs in their homes all while the accused was supposedly unemployed.<\/p>\n

Michael McMahon himself was separately prosecuted for knowingly allowing Turbat to work for him under a false name, the court heard. He was also directed to pay \u20ac55,250 to the Dept. of Social Protection.<\/p>\n

When the couple\u2019s then address at Colthrust Crescent, Lucan, Dublin was searched a sock containing \u20ac21,350 was found, a sum which remains in Garda custody.<\/p>\n

In all there is \u20ac34,490 of stolen money left outstanding.<\/p>\n

Judge Martin Nolan said that the couple had \u201ctaken advantage of a system which needs to be \u201ceasily accessibly\u201d by Cristan adopting \u201canother personality while working\u201d.<\/p>\n

They \u201cconspired together to defraud the social welfare\u201d which is a \u201cserious matter\u201d and occurred over a \u201cprolonged period\u201d, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The court noted that \u201csubstantial repayments\u201d of the stolen money have been made and that there is \u201cmitigation and expression of remorse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re sorry for what they\u2019ve done,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He set a headline sentence of 3 years before sentencing the pair to 18 months each. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Romanian couple who defrauded the Department of Social Protection of well over \u20ac100,000 have been jailed for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,94175,11,12,15,16,5,94176,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-162715","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-judge-nolan","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-social-welfare-fraud","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115492675269263934","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}