Mother and daughter jailed for laundering €513k for Boylan crime gang
A Moneymore mother and daughter have been sentenced to 18 months in jail for laundering over €500,000 for the Boylan organised crime group.
Dundalk court jails two women for €513,495 Boylan gang money laundering
A mother and daughter from Moneymore have each been sentenced to 18 months in prison after their bank accounts were used to channel more than €500,000 for the Boylan organised crime group, lmfm.ie reports.
Bernadette Thornton (45) and Alisha Thornton (23) pleaded guilty at Dundalk Circuit Court to two counts of money laundering spanning periods between March 2020 and November 2022. The total sum laundered across both women's accounts came to €513,495.
Just under €80,000 passed through Alisha Thornton's AIB account, while just over €151,000 moved through her Revolut account. Her mother's AIB account handled almost €139,000, with a further €143,500 flowing through Bernadette Thornton's Revolut account.
Funds in Alisha Thornton's accounts included transfers of €8,000 from persons linked to associates of the crime gang. Withdrawals were recorded across four countries — 121 ATM transactions in Dubai, six in Ukraine, and eight in Turkey — with card payments also made in each location.
The garda investigation into Alisha Thornton's bank activity also uncovered the theft of €11,840 in Carers' Allowance between October 2022 and May 2023. She admitted making a false statement at the Drogheda Social Welfare office in May 2022, claiming she had no income and was not employed while working as a make-up artist and fraudulently claiming the allowance for caring for her grandmother.
Neither defendant had previous convictions. Both are related to a senior figure in the Boylan organised crime group. Bernadette Thornton, who works as a healthcare assistant in a nursing home, told gardaí she had no choice. When her Senior Counsel put it to the investigating detective garda that his client had been under pressure, the garda replied it was more a matter of family loyalty than fear, though he accepted she had not personally profited from the movement of funds.
In handing down sentence, Judge Dara Hayes said there was no evidence either defendant had been subjected to duress or threat. He noted that Alisha Thornton had told the Probation Services she was "assisting a criminal hiding in another country" because she did not want him sleeping on the streets.
Judge Hayes described the offending as prolonged money laundering conducted over 22 months, carried out to the benefit of a crime group whose members were living abroad and beyond the reach of gardaí. He imposed sentences of three years and three months, with the final 21 months suspended.
Source: Google News IE — Crime (en)