A woman with almost 200 previous convictions and once described by a judge as \u201ca one-woman shoplifting industry\u201d has been jailed for the theft of a large cache of alcohol and other items from shops in Donegal.<\/p>\n
Lisa Mongan, a 36-year-old with an address at Cashel Park, Letterkenny, was before Letterkenny District Court.<\/p>\n
Mongan, whose catalogue of previous includes 150 convictions for theft, appeared via video link from the D\u00f3chas Centre where she is in custody.<\/p>\n
Mongan told Judge Emile Daly that she wished to proceed with the matters and plead guilty.<\/p>\n
Sergeant Jim Collins outlined the incidents to the court.<\/p>\n
On February 17, 2026, Mongan entered Aldi, Ballybofey and placed several items into a large trolley. The cache included 26 bottles of Jameson, five bottles of Smirnoff, two crates of Carlsberg and a number of grocery items. The total value of the items taken was \u20ac1,022.<\/p>\n
On the same date at McElhinneys Stores, Ballybofey, Mongan stole items valued at \u20ac500.<\/p>\n
She was also charged with the theft of items worth a combined \u20ac1,000 from Lidl, Ballybofey, on January 10, 2026.
None of the stolen items were recovered, the court heard.<\/p>\n
Mongan has 194 previous convictions, including 150 for theft, and had been given temporary release from prison in January, the court was told.<\/p>\n
Mr Rory O\u2019Brien, solicitor for Mongan, said that his client should be given \u201cthe maximum amount of credit\u201d for what he said was \u201can exceptionally early guilty plea\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Brien said that Mongan sought to move herself from certain peers and moved to Letterkenny to \u201cadopt a new life\u201d but that many \u201cdisruptions and difficulties\u201d befell her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is absolutely no excuse for the offending and she has sought absolute solace in alcohol,\u201d Mr O\u2019Brien said, adding that Mongan has been dealing with the sudden deaths of both her husband and her brother in recent times.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is in grief, she is in mourning and she sought to deal with it by drinking,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen Lisa is sober, she is very polite, understanding and insightful and she has to come to grips with her addiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are dealing with a broken person and someone who was given no chance in life by the people around her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Daly said that there were \u201cnot inconsiderable\u201d amounts involved in these incidents. Judge Daly said that Mongan has dealt with them by very early pleas.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is before the court with a very serious catalogue of previous for similar matters,\u201d Judge Daly said, adding that there are also some more matters pending for Mongan.<\/p>\n
For each of the three incidents, Mongan was sentenced to one month in prison. The sentences are to run consecutively and were backdated to February 26 when she was put into custody.<\/p>\n
In September 2018, Judge Paul Kelly said when jailing Mongan: \u201cThis lady appears to be a one-woman shoplifting industry. Her offending is extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Letterkenny woman jailed for latest \u20ac2,500 shoplifting spree was last modified: March 6th, 2026 by Staff Writer<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTags:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman with almost 200 previous convictions and once described by a judge as \u201ca one-woman shoplifting industry\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,153739,43,129142],"class_list":["post-334168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lisa-mongan","tag-news","tag-shoplifting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334168","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=334168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}