A 36-year-old man has been sentenced to nine months imprisonment for defrauding 18 international students of just under €30,000.
Raul Rodriguez Ramirez ran an agency called Travel Now, which specialised in facilitating international students who wanted to study English in Ireland.
He used the money – which was meant to book their language courses in 2020 and 2021- to fund a Mexican restaurant in Dublin. The restaurant failed during the pandemic.
Sentencing had been previously postponed to allow him time to repay some of the money.
The court heard that a further €3,000 had been paid to the court, amounting to a total of €18,050.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court was told he intended to repay the rest of the money but was not currently in a position to do so.
Judge Orla Crowe noted that the students involved were from countries including Belgium, Mexico, South Korea and Japan.
She said they were young people in their 20s and 30s who were trying to better themselves and said the fraud had “only came to light when they found out they were not registered for a course”.
She said some had lost their life savings, suffered from depression or had to avail of homeless services.
The amounts that were taken from the students varied from €3,800 to €1,292.
Judge Crowe said the defendant was in a significant position of trust over these individuals who were travelling from a long way away.
“They were young non-nationals very far from home, who did not have the resources to cope with the loss of these sums. This would have been well known to the defendant,” she said.
She said Ramirez’s actions constituted a breach of trust and the threshold for a custodial sentence had been met.
She noted his declarations of remorse and the monies that had been paid and sentenced him to 18 months imprisonment with the final nine months suspended.
She ruled that the €18,050 that he had repaid, be divided among the injured parties on a pro rata basis.
