{"id":504026,"date":"2026-06-17T08:43:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T08:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504026\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T08:43:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T08:43:13","slug":"woman-who-stole-e21000-for-weight-loss-surgery-must-accelerate-repayments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504026\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman who stole \u20ac21,000 for weight loss surgery must “accelerate repayments”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A pizza factory worker who stole over \u20ac21,000 in bogus benefits to have weight loss surgery in Turkey has been told by a Judge to “accelerate” her repayments. <\/p>\n

Svitlana Karabudak appeared before Donegal Circuit Court.<\/p>\n

The 50-year-old woman used her friend’s public services card to claim one parent family and child benefit payments from Bundoran Post Office after she had returned to Ukraine. <\/p>\n

The accused woman was previously charged with a total of 42 offences, including 16 of theft, 13 of deception and 13 of forgery.<\/p>\n

She pleaded guilty to a number of sample charges of deception, forgery and theft.<\/p>\n

Detective Garda Paul Lynch told the prosecuting barrister, Ms Fiona Crawford, that the fraudulent claims were made over a period of one year, from March 2023 to March 2024.<\/p>\n

The total amount of money lost to the exchequer was \u20ac21,416.<\/p>\n

An inspector from the Social Welfare\u2019s special investigations unit had discovered that Liudmyla Rahimova was residing in a bed and breakfast in Bundoran and subsequently left to return to Ukraine with her two children. <\/p>\n

It was established that the woman no longer resided at the address, but somebody was still in receipt of payments being collected at Bundoran Post Office.<\/p>\n

Gardai arrived at Ms Karabudak’s home and search it on March 18th, 2024. <\/p>\n

A public service card in the name of Liudmyla Rahimova was found, as well as \u20ac4,100 in \u20ac50 notes as well as receipts for the cash.<\/p>\n

In total, she admitted claiming \u20ac17,056 for the one-parent family payments, \u20ac3,840 in child benefit payments and a back to school payment of \u20ac520.<\/p>\n

\n You may also be interested in\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Little<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Warning<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The accused, who came to Ireland in 2022 to escape the war and who has no previous convictions, admitted her wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

During interview she told detectives that she travelled to Turkey for a weight reduction operation as well as another operation for her son.<\/p>\n

Having heard representations for the accused from barrister Sean McGee BL, instructed by solicitor Rory O’Brien, Judge John Aylmer said he was anxious to impose a non-custodial sentence. <\/p>\n

Last May, he adjourned final sentencing for a year to allow the accused woman to repay the monies.<\/p>\n

When the case was adjourned until yesterday, the court was told that \u20ac10,910 is still outstanding of the money defrauded.<\/p>\n

Mr McGee said his client is paying between \u20ac100 and \u20ac150 per week but stressed that she is the bread-winner in the home and that she is still looking after her son who has additional needs.<\/p>\n

Judge Aylmer said “concerted efforts” had been made to repay the monies, although he would have preferred to have seen an acceleration in payments but that hasn;t happened.<\/p>\n

“It does seem this woman is hard-working and doing her best albeit somewhat slower than the court would like to see,” he said.<\/p>\n

He added she was working and looking after her son and deserves a little more time to meet these repayments.<\/p>\n

He adjourned the case until the next sitting of the court in December to see what progress is made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pizza factory worker who stole over \u20ac21,000 in bogus benefits to have weight loss surgery in Turkey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-504026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504026","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=504026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}