Seventeen testimonials were handed in to the Special Criminal Court on Friday on behalf of a man who was involved with a cross-Border ATM theft gang.
Daniel O’Callaghan (31) was convicted last month of a number of offences relating to a series of ATM thefts in Meath, Cavan and Monaghan in 2018 and 2019.
At a hearing on Friday, Vincent Heneghan SC, for O’Callaghan, asked the three-judge court to consider 17 written testimonials from family and friends which counsel said showed O’Callaghan’s involvement with his family and local community.
He said his client, who won three All-Ireland medals playing for Crossmaglen Rangers, is no longer involved in sport.
During the brief hearing Detective Garda Jim Matthews told prosecution counsel Fiona Murphy SC that O'Callaghan has previous convictions from Dundalk District Court in 2017 and 2011 for dangerous driving. He was also convicted at Dungannon Magistrates Court in Northern Ireland of common assault and was fined.
Ms Justice Tara Burns, presiding, said she will pass sentence on Monday. She said the court wants to consider the sentences handed down to O'Callaghan's three accomplices who pleaded guilty to the same ATM robberies for which he was convicted after a trial.
They were sentenced on Friday to a combined 19 years and six months.
Following a trial O'Callaghan, of Monog Road, Crossmaglen, Co Armagh was found guilty of all 16 counts against him relating to an ATM theft and an attempted ATM theft in Cavan and Monaghan in 2019.
Ms Justice Tara Burns at the three-judge, non-jury court found that O’Callaghan was “intimately involved” in the planning of the thefts, which followed a “modus operandi” that was seen in several other thefts that the court said were carried out by the same gang earlier in 2019 and in late 2018.
The final attempt to steal an ATM was thwarted by gardaí who were watching as the gang drove a digger up beside an ATM in Virginia Co Cavan in the early hours on August 14th, 2019.
Gardaí saw a stolen Toyota Landcruiser travelling in convoy with the digger. The Landcruiser was pulling a trailer into which the gang intended to place the ATM before taking it to a premises at Tullypole, Moynalty, Co Meath where the money would be removed.
Gardaí would later discover more than €438,000 hidden in various locations and buried in the ground at Tullypole.