Three Romanian men jailed after crime spree across Mayo
The trio were sentenced to eight months imprisonment, with three months suspended, after the court dealt with nine charges relating to a spree of thefts in Mayo.
Three men have been sentenced to prison after admitting to a series of thefts carried out across Mayo last March, in a case heard at Midleton District Court last month.
Gheorghe Alexandrescu (39), Christian Iancu (46) and Florian Ristea (46) — all of no fixed abode — were each sentenced to eight months imprisonment, with three months suspended, after the court dealt with nine charges relating to a spree of thefts in Mayo.
The court also took into consideration similar charges linked to the group in Tralee as part of the sentencing process.
Among the charges were two relating to thefts from the Tesco car park in Westport on March 15. In one incident, €500 was stolen, while a separate charge related to the theft of €250 from the same car park.
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The men also faced two charges connected to thefts from Hoban's Centra in Westport, where goods to the value of €37.40 and €5.50 were taken.
Casey's Quickstop in Castlebar was targeted twice, with two separate charges relating to thefts of €37.40 from the premises on each occasion.
A stolen debit card was also used by the group at McDonald's in Castlebar to purchase goods worth €2.30, €2.40 and €22.75.
Rental car
As previously reported by The Mayo News, gardaí in Westport station acted quickly in March and were able to trace the movements of the suspects on CCTV before identifying the car they were travelling in.
The car was registered to a car rental company in Dublin airport, who fortunately had a GPS fitted into the vehicle. The car had been rented for 14 days.
The following morning Westport Gardaí travelled to Midleton and arrested the three men.
The arrests were timely as the car had been due to be returned to the car rental company the following day.
It is unknown at this stage if the three men intended to fly out that same day or may have planned to rent another car.
Distraction method
Separately, it is believed that thefts, which used a similar distraction method, were investigated in at least seven other towns during the same two week period.
A common pattern in these thefts appears to be the targeting of elderly women, who were shopping alone and paying in cash.
They would wait until the lady had packed the shopping in her car and sat into the front seat before a well-dressed man would tap on the window to say there was a problem with the back of her car.
The alleged modus operandi matches the method described by Islandeady’s Mary Moylette.
“That alerted me to keep my eyes peeled and keep looking and I kept watching each side. And he kept insisting on me to go down to look,” Mary told The Mayo News last March.