A 73-year-old American man has been sentenced to 27 months in prison "for challenging and threatening the integrity of the passport system in this country".
Randolph Kirk Parker, who has been in custody since his arrest at the Cork Passport Office last September, had pleaded guilty to five charges in a case where he had applied for Irish passports in the names of two babies - Geoffrey Warbrook and Philip Morris - who died in the 1950s.
Sentencing him today at Cork Circuit Court, Judge Jonathan Dunphy said he had to take into account a number of aggravating factors in the case including the fact that Mr Parker's actions challenged and threatened the integrity of the passport system here, as well as his lack of co-operation with investigating gardaí.
Other factors, he said, included the time and cost in trying to establish his true identity which has to be borne by the State, and the breach of trust to friends who know him in Ireland.
However, he said these factors had to be balanced with the fact that no book of evidence had been needed in the case; that he had been pleasant to deal with; that he had no previous convictions that investigators are aware of; that he was using his time well in the prison library; his age, and the time he has already served.
Judge Dunphy sentenced him to three-and-a-half years, suspending the final 15 months on the basis that he enter into a bond of €500 to keep the peace and not come to the attention of gardaí for two years.
The sentence is backdated to when he first went into custody last September.
It is also a condition of the bond that within 12 hours of his release from prison he provides gardaí with an address where he can be contacted.
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An earlier sitting of the court heard that the investigation had been "quite complicated".
The court was told it involved applications Parker made for passports in two names - Philip Morris and Geoffrey Warbrook - and more recent applications to renew these passports.
Both of those names were the names of Irish babies who died in the 1950s.
Detective Garda Padraic Hanley of the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigations told Judge Dunphy that initially they believed Parker's name was Philip Morris.
Det Garda Hanley told the court that he first arrested Parker on 14 September last at the passport office on the South Mall, in Cork when he was in the process of collecting a passport for which he applied a number of days previously, as he wished to leave the country, in the name of Philip Frank Morris.
The same man had applied from Amsterdam on 7 June 2022 to renew a passport in the name of Geoffrey Warbrook which had sparked an investigation.
However, it turned out he was neither Geoffrey Warbrook nor Philp Morris - infants who died in 1952.
"We had two IDs for this person - two applications in the name of Philip Morris, two in the name of Geoffrey Warbrook - but we had no idea who this person is."
Det Garda Hanley said, following extensive international enquiries, the FBI confirmed from a Michigan arrest record dating from 1970, that his real name was Randolph Kirk Parker.
Parker has been in custody at Cork Prison since his arrest. The court heard that while he refused to answer questions and did not co-operate, he was affable and articulate.
They still know very little about him other than he came into Ireland via Shannon Airport in 1988, that he travelled around Europe and lived in Amsterdam for some time. He had a VHI account here and a post office box at an address in Dublin.
The court was told that he had many friends around Ireland who knew him by a different name entirely.
Defence barrister Brendan Kelly said Parker encountered visa difficulties in the course of business activities and met a man with knowledge of the Irish passport system who gave him advice on how to do what he did.
Mr Kelly said he has been working in the library in the prison to which Det Garda Hanley responded that that didn't surprise him. "He is a man of books."
Parker had pleaded guilty to four counts of using false information to obtain passports and one count of possessing a false document.
The charges, which were admitted, all relate to the passport office on the South Mall in Cork.
