{"id":171579,"date":"2025-11-09T15:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T15:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/171579\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T15:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T15:13:10","slug":"woman-stole-more-than-e36000-from-her-disabled-brothers-bank-account-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/171579\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman stole more than \u20ac36,000 from her disabled brother\u2019s bank account \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A young Donegal<\/a> woman stole more than \u20ac36,000 from her disabled brother\u2019s bank account to feed her drug habit.<\/p>\n

Amy Harpur appeared at Letterkenny Circuit Court<\/a> on a single charge of theft.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old was charged that with stealing \u20ac36,027 belonging to Andrew Harpur at Ulster Bank, Main Street in Ballybofey.<\/p>\n

The alleged thefts took place between June 7th, 2021 and July 10th, 2022.<\/p>\n

The court was told that Ms Harpur used her mobile phone to make a total of 178 transactions stealing money from her brother\u2019s account.<\/p>\n

When caught, there was just \u20ac250 left in Mr Harpur\u2019s account.<\/p>\n

The court heard that the victim, who has both autism and Asperger syndrome, did not realise the money had been stolen from his account.<\/p>\n

Detective Garda John O\u2019Sullivan, led by barrister for the state, Ms Fiona Crawford, outlined the details of the thefts.<\/p>\n

He told how Gardai received a complaint from Ms Florence McConaghey, the mother of the victim and the accused.<\/p>\n

She said she realised that her son\u2019s bank account was gone very low and that a number of withdrawals had been made by her daughter, Amy.<\/p>\n

Ms Harpur was arrested on September 14th, 2023 and immediately made full admissions to taking the money.<\/p>\n

When interviewed by Gardai, Mr Harpur told detectives \u201cI put my hands up, he didn\u2019t know what was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court was told that Ms Harpur has no previous convictions.<\/p>\n

Barrister for Ms Harpur, Mr Ciaran O\u2019Rourke, BL, instructed by PA Dorrian and Company, said the accused woman\u2019s mother was in court supporting her and that she did not wish her daughter to receive a custodial sentence.<\/p>\n

Explaining the series of thefts, Mr O\u2019Rourke said his client had originally planned to borrow to pay off a drug debt and pay for drugs but she got access to her brother\u2019s account and things \u201cspiralled out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Rourke asked Detective O\u2019Sullivan if he had engaged with Mr Harpur, with a previous address at Pump Street, Carrigans, since the incident.<\/p>\n

The detective replied \u201cShe is a different person now. She was in a bad place then but thankfully she has her life back on track compared to the day we searched her house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Harpur took to the witness stand and told how she developed a drug habit after becoming involved with a man during what she called a toxic relationship.<\/p>\n

She began taking cannabis and cocaine and then developed a large drug debt for which she took money from her brother\u2019s account.<\/p>\n

The accused said she began taking small amounts of money but that the thefts \u201cspiralled out of control\u201d to a point when she did not know how much money she was stealing.<\/p>\n

However, she told the court that she was no longer in that relationship and is now clean from drugs having started a new relationship.<\/p>\n

She added that she was now living in Derry, had a good job and had brought \u00a315,000stg (\u20ac22,789.39) to court to give back to her brother as part of the money she had stolen from him.<\/p>\n

She said that paying back the money to her brother is only the start of trying to rebuild her relationship with him and with her family.<\/p>\n

She also said she could repay between \u20ac500 and \u20ac1,000 each month.<\/p>\n

Judge Aylmer said he would adjourn the case for 12 months until October 26th, 2026 saying he could deal with the matter on a non custodial basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to see steady and significant progress in that direction,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A young Donegal woman stole more than \u20ac36,000 from her disabled brother\u2019s bank account to feed her drug…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,24696,5,98018,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-171579","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-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-mam","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-nick-bradshaw","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115520392777892187","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171579","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=171579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}