A software engineer was caught providing an unlicensed taxi service advertised online following a sting operation in Dublin, a court has heard.<\/p>\n
Shanming Li (23) of Newcastle Road, Lucan, Co Dublin, pleaded guilty on Monday to operating as a taxi without a public service vehicle licence on February 24th.<\/p>\n
Prosecution solicitor Jason Teahan told Dublin District Court it was linked to a social media advert used by the Chinese community.<\/p>\n
A National Transport Authority (NTA) authorised officer, Anthony Carey, made contact, booked a journey and arranged a collection point.<\/p>\n
Judge Anthony Halpin noted the NTA officer was met at Macken Street in Dublin 2. <\/p>\n
A \u20ac230 fare to Rosslare was agreed, at which the undercover officer identified himself.<\/p>\n
The court heard that, when asked why he had done it, the accused informed the NTA officer that it was \u201cjust for extra money\u201d.<\/p>\n
Li had no previous convictions and was co-operative, the judge said.<\/p>\n
Defence solicitor Darren Gray pleaded for leniency, telling the court his client came to Ireland from China a decade ago and attended college, earning a master\u2019s degree.<\/p>\n
Gray said Li, who was not required to give evidence, worked as a software engineer but took on the driving work for additional money. <\/p>\n
The court heard he had paid the prosecution costs. <\/p>\n
Considering his guilty plea and remorse, the judge struck out the case after Li paid \u20ac150 to charity forthwith, sparing him a recorded conviction for the offence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A software engineer was caught providing an unlicensed taxi service advertised online following a sting operation in Dublin,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[86828,46428,210291,16865,61,60,2285,56783,6717,43,314],"class_list":["post-489613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-civil-rights","tag-courthouse","tag-equal-arm-balance","tag-equality","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-justice","tag-justice-concept","tag-law","tag-news","tag-statue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489613","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=489613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}