A motor trader admitted he tried to claim almost €20,000 for the theft of a Mercedes that he did not own and was not stolen, that he had seen parked on a street in Dalkey, Co Dublin, ten years ago.
Donatas Sadauskas, 40, previously of Sallins Pier, Co Kildare fled the country in December 2016 after gardaí began investigating the case and was extradited eight years later to face trial.
He pleaded guilty to making a false report and statement to gardaí at Dún Laoghaire station on 17 December 2016 to show that an offence had been committed.
Donatas Sadauskas had been watching an S Class Mercedes he did not own that had been parked on Victoria Road in Dalkey.
The owner sold the car to a company in the UK in December 2016 and when Sadauskas saw it had gone, he went to gardaí in Dun Laoghaire and reported it as his car, and said it had been stolen.
He gave gardaí a copy of his licence, a purchase order for the car and a key which he said he had used to lock it but which did not work and was not for that car.
He told them that he had bought the car from a Donaldus Sadovskis, a person whom gardaí could never trace.
The car had also been registered in this "fictitious" name in the UK three months earlier and gardaí suspect that Sadauskas did that as part of the scam.
The 40-year-old also lodged a claim with AXA insurance for €19,500, which was examined by fraud investigator Colm Featherstone. When the fraud became apparent, Sadauskas fled the country.
He was arrested at an airport in Belgium in February 2024, extradited and pleaded guilty to making a false report to gardaí about the theft of a car that he never owned having been stolen when it was not.
The car was subsequently burned out in an unrelated incident in a car park in Manchester and destroyed.
When the judge asked Detective Daniel Treacy, from the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau, why Sadauskas had chosen this car for the fraud, he replied: "I'm dying to know, judge".
He worked at a factory in Kildare before he was made redundant and set himself up in the motor trade.
His company is registered in the UK and the court was told it has supplied vehicles to the Ukrainian army for the war with Russia.
His defence counsel said he had taken a very stupid risk and had tried "to pull a fast one" which was very quickly uncovered and now he was "holding his hands up".
Judge Orla Crowe said that she would sentence Sadauskas on Thursday.
