Brothers aggressively pushed elderly Cork woman to write almost €25k in cheques to buy tools and machinery 

Two Limerick brothers who aggressively pushed an elderly woman to write almost €25,000 in cheques to buy a range of tools and equipment have withdrawn their appeal against the severity of a two-year jail term imposed on each of them for the crime.

Thomas O’Driscoll (40) of Boherbuoi, Rathkeale and Patrick O’Driscoll (39) of Wolfburgess East, Rathkeale, Co Limerick had pleaded guilty to a charge of deception at Goleen, Co Cork in November 2018 at a sitting of Cork Circuit Criminal Court last November.

It heard they had targeted a woman in her 70s in conversation at a jewellery shop in Skibbereen on November 11, 2018 and persuaded her to give them her phone number after showing her a machinery brochure.

They subsequently called to her house in Goleen and aggressively pushed her to buy machinery and tools and write cheques totalling almost €25,000.

The woman later contacted her bank to cancel the cheques but not before sums totalling €6,500 had been cashed.

The two men provided €6,000 in compensation for their victim in court and each also offered €4,000 of their bail money to her.

Lawyers for the two brothers were due to begin an appeal at the Court of Appeal on Monday against the two-year jail sentence handed down by Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin.

However, the pair withdrew their appeal after the president of the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice George Birmingham, with Mr Justice John Edwards and Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, observed that it was open to the court to also increase the term of imprisonment.

Following an adjournment, Eileen O’Leary SC for the O’Driscolls, informed the court that they wished to withdraw their appeal.

Mr Justice Birmingham remarked that it was “a wise decision” and noted the case had involved the brothers identifying a victim who was vulnerable.