'Money mule' allowed €16,500 to be transferred to his account

A man who allowed his bank account to be used to defraud a company out of €16,500, before using the stolen money to purchase a number of clothing and electronic items for himself, has been warned to repay what he did manage to spend within a year or face an 18-month prison sentence.

Ismail Magomayev (21), with an address of Ard na Rí, Racecourse Road, Roscommon, will face 240 hours of community service in lieu of an 18 month prison sentence if he successfully pays off a sum of €6,000 by June of next year.

He appeared before a sitting of Roscommon Circuit Court, facing one charge of money-laundering, whereby he allowed the transfer of €16,500 to his account from a Tipperary construction company in February of last year.

Mr Magomayev came forward on a signed guilty plea to the sole count on the indictment.

Garda Shane O’Connor outlined to Sean O’Quigley BL, prosecuting, how the owner of the construction company had contracted a Roscommon company to carry out some fencing work in September 2024.

Following a number of emails back and forth to agree a price and the details of the job, works commenced in December 2024, with a payment of €50,000 being made to the company using bank details given to the injured party via email.

The job finished in January 2025, the court heard, and on February 17th, the injured party received an email from the contractor seeking the balance.

The following day, he received a further email indicating there had been a change in bank details, as well as a change in phone number for the person he’d been in touch with.

The new details were for a Greek bank account, which he thought was strange, but put it down to the fact it was a big company. The payment failed, and details for an Irish account were given via the new mobile phone number he’d been in touch with.

On February 20th, the injured party transferred €16,500 into that AIB bank account as payment for the job but, for a number days after that, he continued to receive payment requests, which aroused his suspicion, prompting him to contact gardaí.

Five days after the payment had been made, the accused man presented himself at Roscommon Garda Station to report that he was a “money mule” and was receiving threats on his life.

He gave a statement that he had provided his bank details to someone and received the money to his account. However, rather than following instructions to pass it on, he spent some of it on himself.

A total of €5,254.18 of the total amount had been spent. The accused man had purchased an Apple iPhone, a Samsung TV, a Sony Playstation 5 and a three-piece suit. There were further attempts to spend the remaining €11,245.82 but the funds were recalled by the bank.

He travelled with gardaí to his home, where he handed over the property he had purchased, with the exception of the three-piece suit, which had been altered to fit him.

A search warrant was secured and the accused’s phone was analysed for transactions and interactions. Mr Magomayev cooperated with gardaí by providing them with the real names of individuals on Snapchat and Instagram.

He was formally arrested and charged on December 12th, 2025, and pleaded guilty to the charge at the district court earlier this year, before affirming that plea of guilty at the circuit court.

A victim impact statement read out in court on behalf of the injured party stated that the small family business had suffered the “stress of being sucked in to the criminal side of fraud” and “the feeling that our data was no longer safe”.

The man said he felt “violated and threatened” and added that there is always an element of uncertainty and mistrust now when transacting online.

Ross Nestor BL, on behalf of the accused, said it “wasn’t a very sophisticated enterprise”, and that there was no suggestion he was involved in the first phase of the deception, “he was used as a money mule”.

It was a matter of days after the transfer of the funds that he went to Roscommon Garda Station seeking assistance with threats he was receiving.

“I’m not surprised, considering he had spent so much of the money,” Judge Kenneth Connolly remarked.

Mr Magomayev has no previous convictions and has not come to the subsequent adverse attention of gardaí, Mr Nestor said. He comes from a respectable family in Roscommon town, with hard-working parents, and is the second of six children.

He’s attending college with aspirations to become an apprentice carpenter, and has an offer of a job, which he plans to take up when he finishes his exams in the coming weeks.

“There’s no evidence to suggest he was involved with organised crime, and he is no longer associated with the individuals he got involved with. This was simply a foolish decision to provide his bank details,” said Mr Nestor.

The items he had purchased remained in the possession of the gardaí, the court heard, with the three-piece suit remaining in the shop from which it was purchased. As the suit was altered to fit the accused, it is not of any resale value. The balance of the money has not been recovered by the injured party.

Mr Magomayev had gathered a sum of €400 by way of compensation, but made a commitment to pay back the money in full.

In a letter of apology furnished to the court, he apologised sincerely for his actions. He said he is “very ashamed” of what he did and the impact it had on the victim. He added that he has “learned a salutary lesson”, has “taken responsibility for the damage done” and “will make restitution”.

Judge Connolly noted the age of the accused, the fact he had no previous convictions and hadn’t come to the adverse notice of the gardaí since, but said he was “extremely unimpressed” with the actions of Mr Magomayev.

“He went into it with his eyes wide open for the purpose of making easy money. Generally I hear stories of people being duped, but this doesn’t seem to be the case in his case,” he said.

“Thereafter, despite the fact we’re given a spectre of threat in the background, he went off on a spending spree. Whilst that might smack of complete and utter immaturity, it is a very poor decision compounding an already poor decision and it’s not at all clear to me that he’s learned his lesson despite a positive probation report. And he has made no restitution, save for €400 in court today.” Aggravating factors taken into account included the “relatively large sum of money”, the fact he was a willing participant in the offending, and the fact he spent the money on himself.

“The only mature choice he made was to attend at the Garda Station, but perhaps that was in circumstances that he was trying to save his own skin from the persons he facilitated,” he said.

He assessed Mr Magomayev’s culpability as low, based on his age and his role in the operation and stated he fixed a headline sentence of 27 months imprisonment.

Taking into account such mitigating factors as a signed guilty plea, his young age, the fact he has no previous convictions, has been in consistent education, comes from a good family and has made an offer of full restitution, Judge Connolly reduced that to 18 months.

However, he adjourned the finalisation of that sentence for a period of one year, to allow Mr Magomayev an opportunity to put together a total of €6,000 in restitution, stating that he doesn’t want that to be “piecemeal”, and expects the full amount by June 2027.

He remanded Mr Magomayev on continuing bail, adding a condition that he engage with the probation service for consideration to be included on the Restorative Justice and Community Programme, “as I feel he hasn’t quite understood the effects of his offending on society”.

“This is his one opportunity. I want the entire sum in June. If he has discharged that sum, I will commute the sentence to 240 hours of community service” said Judge Connolly.

He ordered that the electronic goods be donated to the Make a Wish Foundation, if they are willing to accept them, as they are “clearly the proceeds of crime”, adding that if the charity does not accept the donation, they should be given to St Vincent de Paul to sell in one of their shops.

“In relation to the three-piece suit, in the event that he discharges all of those moneys on time and in a proper order, and if there’s no further adverse notice, he can have the suit because he’ll have paid for it at that stage and it’s of little use to anyone else,” he concluded.

Published as part of the Courts Reporting Scheme.