by Andrew Carey
A PROFESSIONAL poker player has failed to convince a judge that thousands of euro seized by gardaí were not the proceeds of crime.
33-year-old Limerick poker player Paul Carr won €300,000 in April 2010 when he took second place in the Paddy Power poker classic in Dublin.
A year later, €36,000 was seized from a house that Gardai had searched on foot of a section 26 drugs warrant. The house in the Old Cratloe Road area of Limerick owned by the girlfriend of Jason Ahern, an associate of Carr’s had been under Garda surveillance for some time.
A brown paper bag containing cash was found in a wardrobe of an upstairs bedroom and Jason Ahern said he had been given the money by Carr for safekeeping as he didn’t have a bank account.
On May 4, 2011, Carr called to the Garda station and claimed that the money was his. He said he won the money playing poker in Dublin. Gardaí confirmed that he had played in a tournament at the Burlington Hotel but was not among the prize winners.
District Court applications to the to have the money returned were refused.
The matter was before last week’s sitting of Limerick Circuit Court where Gardaí applied to have the money forfeited as they questioned its provenance and maintained that it originated from the proceeds of crime or were being used to find criminal activity.
In an affidavit, Paul Carr draw the court’s attention to the lodgements and withdrawals from his account in the period between December 2010 and April 2011 to the value of €35,400 which was roughly equivalent to the €36,000 seized.
Counsel for Mr Carr, Michael Collins, said that while his client may have “come from a certain part of town” or “may have friends in low places”, this was not grounds enough to question how he came to have such large sums of money.
The court also heard that Gardaí on a routine traffic stop in Ballysimon found over €240,000 in cash in a Dunnes Stores bag in the footwell of a car. Carr also claimed ownership of this money and Mr Collins said that this, along with the €36,000 was the total amount of his winnings.
After adjourning the matter overnight, Judge Tom O’Donnell ordered that the money be forfeited to the State.
The judge allowed that €4,000 of the €36,000 be given to his solicitor to cover the costs of a possible appeal.
