'Extended Hours' Sentence For Staff Thief

A court has heard how a Brown Thomas employee stole €20,000 from his store in gift vouchers.

Part-time worker, Adam Brennan, 26, from Landscape Park in Churchtown, pleaded guilty to four counts of stealing booklets of vouchers which he substituted for cash over a period of six months.

Presiding Judge Hogan said that while stealing from an employer was a serious betrayal of trust he did not think a custodial sentence was appropriate in this case. He sentenced Brennan to 240 hours community service.

Brennan’s scam was only exposed after an error by a Brinks Allied Security company worker, who accidentally left behind an envelope full of gift vouchers numbered in sequence instead of mixed.

CCTV was then used to track the movements of Brennan. The cameras caught the cash office worker Brennan pocketing an envelope and he was arrested five minutes later in the street outside the store.

Garda Conor O Braonain told the prosecuting counsel, Mr Kerida Naidoo BL, that he calculated Brennan had taken a total of €20,160 on about eight separate occasions.

Brennan repaid the amount in full back to Brown Thomas with a loan from his father.

Brennan had graduated with a Certificate in Applied Science from the Dublin Institute of Technology before pursuing a career in outdoor education.

At the time of the incident he was having difficulty finding work in the sector.

(DW)