A 43-year-old man has admitted he applied for a false passport in his own name that was then used by the Kinahan organised crime group's leader, Daniel Kinahan.
Seamus Walsh, from Mountainview Crescent in Dundalk, was paid €2,000 after he said he was approached by a man he said he did not know who was "a member of the Travelling community".
Walsh was a heroin addict at the time and said he did not know who his passport was going to.
Mr Kinahan had the use of the passport for six years before it was cancelled.
Detective Garda Phelim McKenna of the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation said their investigation began on foot of a complaint from the Passport Office.
They discovered that the supporting documentation, a bill, a drivers' licence and bank account details were false and that the photograph that accompanied the application was that of Mr Kinahan, not Walsh.
Det Garda McKenna said Mr Kinahan is a senior figure in organised crime and it was common in these cases that vulnerable people with drug or alcohol addictions were approached for passports.
Walsh told gardaí that when the passport arrived at his house in Dundalk, he handed it over to this "unknown Traveller" who had been "in and out of his house selling drugs".
Walsh said he did not know who he got it for and said he was "off his head on drugs" at the time.
Walsh's defence counsel Ronan O'Carroll said Walsh had been off heroin for the past seven years and was the sole carer for his mother, who is ill and in a wheelchair.
Judge Dara Hayes said acquiring a passport in this manner can only be for a criminal purpose, irrespective of what criminal it was for and was a serious offence.
He said he wanted three urinalysis tests as proof that Walsh was off drugs and adjourned sentencing until 25 April, but warned him that a custodial sentence was a very real possibility.
