{"id":331321,"date":"2026-03-06T03:23:49","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T03:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/331321\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T03:23:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T03:23:49","slug":"priest-lost-nearly-e50000-in-broadband-phishing-scam-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/331321\/","title":{"rendered":"Priest lost nearly \u20ac50,000 in broadband phishing scam \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A parish priest had almost \u20ac50,000 stolen from his personal bank account in a scam<\/a> after he tried to pay a connection fee for broadband through online banking.<\/p>\n

The priest told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court<\/a> that he believes the bank failed him as a customer. <\/p>\n

Kelvin Kleinovas (24) later allowed \u20ac10,000 of the cash that had been stolen from the priest\u2019s account to be lodged into his own account.<\/p>\n

Kleinovas, of Mayeston Green, St Margaret\u2019s Road, Finglas, Dublin 11, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to having the proceeds of crime in his bank account in August 2019. He was given a suspended sentence.<\/p>\n

Garda Bartholomew McCarthy told Tessa White, prosecuting, that the priest reported the theft to garda\u00ed after Bank of Ireland alerted him that they had frozen his account due to suspicious activity.<\/p>\n

He said days earlier the priest received a call to the presbytery indicating that the caller was from a broadband company. He was told the line was being upgraded and the priest needed to pay a once-off fee of \u20ac5.<\/p>\n

The priest was instructed to pay the fee online. He was told that when the fee was being processed, the screen would go blank but it would come back again to continue processing the payment.<\/p>\n

McCarthy confirmed that ultimately the priest tried to make the payment over 40 times over a four-day period, which resulted in almost \u20ac50,000 being stolen from his account.<\/p>\n

The priest\u2019s bank account was analysed and \u20ac10,000 of the stolen cash was traced to Kleinovas\u2019s bank account.<\/p>\n

He was arrested in September 2021 and claimed he had been approached to hand over his bank details for payment. He supplied his details but was never paid.<\/p>\n

Kleinovas has seven previous convictions including one for money laundering, for which he received a two-year suspended sentence.<\/p>\n

McCarthy confirmed that none of the money stolen was ever recovered.<\/p>\n

A victim impact statement from the priest said it was a serious amount of money taken and the theft has had a devastating impact on him.<\/p>\n

The priest said he believes that the bank failed him as a customer and said the fraudsters involved inflicted pain and suffering.<\/p>\n

McCarthy agreed with Marc Thompson, defending, that his client\u2019s involvement \u201cstarts and stops with providing his bank details\u201d.<\/p>\n

The court heard that Kleinovas is actively looking for work, which he is finding difficult as he is currently living in homeless accommodation. He spends most of his spare time with his child.<\/p>\n

Thompson acknowledged that the priest has had no recompense from the bank and said his client is of limited financial means. He had written a letter of apology to the priest and brought \u20ac2,000 to be handed over to him.<\/p>\n

Judge Orla Crowe noted that the accused had carried out the offence for gain, and that he had previous convictions, including one for money laundering.<\/p>\n

She imposed a sentence of 18 months but suspended it for three years on the payment of \u20ac2,000 for the injured party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A parish priest had almost \u20ac50,000 stolen from his personal bank account in a scam after he tried…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13553,3312,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-331321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-circuit-court","tag-cybersecurity","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}