AN INDIAN national has admitted his role in a £30,000 mobile phone cloning fraud organised by a British criminal cartel.
Judge Kieran O'Connor imposed a three year sentence on Abdul Umarjee (39) at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court but ordered he should be released on May 25th next.
He told Umarjee to go back to London and warned he would have to serve the rest of the jail term if he returned to Ireland. Judge O'Connor said the court had to take a serious view of foreign nationals setting out to defraud Telecom Eireann.
Umarjee pleaded guilty to causing losses to Telecom Eireann by illegal use of the Eircell mobile phone network at a flat in Cook Street, Dublin. He had no previous convictions.
Det Sgt Michael Clifford told Mr Shane Murphy, prosecuting, that an investigation was launched after Eircell customers began to complain about unexplained increases in their bills.
Using sophisticated detection equipment, gardai traced the problem to the Cook Street flat. When they raided it on October 25th last they found Umarjee, a second Indian national and a bank of 12 mobile phones.
The phones were in pairs, connected mouth piece to ear piece, and conversations were taking place. These phones were clones of phones belonging to legitimate Eircell subscribers.
Often in these types of crimes scanners were used to detect their phone numbers and PINs and these numbers would then be programmed into the clones. In this way, calls made through the criminal gang were charged to Eircell customers, said witness.
Det Sgt Clifford explained the operation in the flat was a base station for an "international call shop". The call shop, based in Britain, ran an illegal service whereby people abroad paid a fee for the use of the cloned phones to make international calls.
The phones in the flat had been used to call a large number of countries, including Pakistan, Kuwait, Surinam, India and America.
Bills totalling £30,000 were run up in the fraud. Telecom Eireann had to foot the bills as well as paying commission to foreign telecom companies for the use of their mobile phone networks, said Det Sgt Clifford.
He agreed with Mr Michael O'Higgins, defending, that Umarjee was only a "foot soldier" in the fraud. Both he and the other Indian, Said Mohamed, came to Ireland with a Pakistani national who set up the operation.
Umarjee and Mohamed were brought over to look after the phones and were paid £1 for every call they connected on the instructions of their bosses in Britain.
Mr O'Higgins said his client, a Muslim, had been in custody since his arrest and he found practical difficulties trying to comply with Islamic rules regarding prayer and food. Last month, his co accused Mohamed received a three year jail term with 27 months suspended.