{"id":168182,"date":"2025-11-07T16:27:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T16:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/168182\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T16:27:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T16:27:10","slug":"no-jail-for-man-who-lied-to-get-social-welfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/168182\/","title":{"rendered":"No jail for man who lied to get social welfare"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man who gained \u20ac145,744.05 after claiming social welfare using a false name and identity has avoided jail.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Circuit Criminal Court heard how Nigerian Christopher Oshodin (48), of Kildare Road Crumlin 12, came to Ireland in 2001, where he claimed to be from Zimbabwe after he said he was told the Taoiseach at the time was deporting Nigerians.<\/p>\n

When he arrived in Ireland as an asylum seeker, he claimed his name was Christopher Umar, and has benefited from children\u2019s allowance, jobseeker\u2019s allowance, clothing allowance, household allowance, and travel allowance on dates between 2001 and 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After claiming benefits as Mr. Umar for over two decades, in February 2023 he approached the Department of Social Welfare and confessed to his true identity. The court heard this was motivated by a desire for his three children to know their true heritage after his \u201cconversion to honesty\u201d.<\/p>\n

The move was also motivated by a desire to \u201cregularise\u201d his immigration status.<\/p>\n

Detective Garda Jason Weir told the court that it was unclear whether Oshodin would have been entitled to the benefits in his true name as a social welfare official had said that every individual\u2019s circumstances have to be considered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Letters from the Department of Social Welfare, the Department of Justice, and the true passport of the accused were submitted to investigating Garda\u00ed as part of establishing his true identity.<\/p>\n

The court heard that he is now in receipt of disability allowance, that he owes \u20ac33,000 in child benefit, and that there is \u20ac100 being taken from his child benefit as he is still in receipt of the payments as he has sole custody of his three children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His status in Ireland is up for \u201crenewal\u201d next year, the court heard, and he is now a dedicated attendee at Living Christ Ministry, with the pastor of the church accompanying him to court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His defending counsel, Simon Matthews BL argued that his client is a \u201cproactive\u201d person and has \u201cintegrated fully into his community\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His former partner, Ms. Bernadette Smith submitted a character reference in respect of the accused saying that he is the step father to her daughters, and that he borrows money from her and pays it back.<\/p>\n

Mr. Matthews said that his client had committed a \u201cvery serious offence\u201d by giving a \u201cwrong name\u201d and country of origin and had \u201clived under that alias for a significant time\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said that Oshodin felt a \u201csignificant amount of guilt\u201d for what he had done, but that he did it \u201cfor a right reason\u201d and not for a \u201cnefarious\u201d one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After considering a sentence overnight, Judge Martin Nolan said that the accused had used a \u201cfake\u201d name to extract social welfare from the State.<\/p>\n

He said that the State was \u201centitled to people being honest and truthful and candid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Nolan said that the accused had \u201cmade the case against himself\u201d and that his guilty plea, lack of convictions, and cooperation had to be taken into account.<\/p>\n

The court also placed weight on the accused\u2019s being the sole carer for three children, saying it was the \u201conly thing that stays my hand\u201d in terms of imposing a custodial sentence.<\/p>\n

He said that there was \u201cno evidence to say what happened to the money\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Judge Nolan said that although it was unclear if Oshodin would have been entitled to the money he had stolen under his name, that he was undoubtedly entitled to the child benefit in respect of his children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He added that the \u201ccourt is loath to deprive three\u00a0 children of their sole guardian,\u201d before imposing a four year custodial sentence which he suspended in full on condition of good behaviour for four years and that Oshodin enter into a bond of \u20ac100.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who gained \u20ac145,744.05 after claiming social welfare using a false name and identity has avoided jail.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,27,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,94176,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-168182","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-courts","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","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\/115509359060075957","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168182","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=168182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}