Notorious Newry money launderer pleads guilty to a string of offenses just before inquest – Arma I

A man who became notorious as Ireland’s biggest money launderer has pleaded guilty to a series of new offenses after being exposed in a Europe-wide investigation into the Encrochat network.

As the jury was sworn in and prepared to hear the trial of Rory Patrick James Trainor at Coleraine Crown Court, KC Neil Connor, defending, asked for the 48-year-old to be re-tried on all but two of the charges.

Traynor, currently in custody at HMP Maghaberry but with an address in Dunbree Newrypleaded guilty to a total of 39 counts, including 20 money laundering offenses and 19 drug offences, all committed between March 30 and June 10, 2020.

Despite using a short form for many of the charges, it took the court clerk nearly 20 minutes to review the indictment and make sure Trainor knew the charges and understood what he was admitting to.

The price of medicines includes:

– Five charges of involvement in the importation of cannabis and cocaine;
– Five counts of supplying or offering to supply cannabis;
– Eight counts of conspiring with others to possess cannabis for the purpose of supply and
– One charge of being involved in the supply of cocaine.

Trainor pleaded guilty to criminal property charges:

– 14 counts of conspiring with others to transfer criminal property;
– Four counts of conspiring with others to convert criminal property;
– Single charges of possession and transfer of criminal property.

Figures in the charges detailing that in just three months Trainor was involved in the laundering of £1,321,700 and a further €50,000, and that he conspired with a dozen others in his drug dealing and money laundering.

Although most are known only by pseudonyms or code words such as knucklehead, snailmallet, Celticbhoy, square revolver and zammo Maguire, the first three charges relate to Trainor’s conspiracy with Irish mobster Michael O’Loughlin.

In April last year, O’Loughlin, originally from Galway, who lived in Co. Downey, when he was abducted, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to similar offences, but his crimes included a charge of conspiracy to commit murder.

He previously hit the headlines when he was jailed for nine years for being a member of a criminal organization in 2012 – the first such sentence in the Republic under new anti-gang laws – but the sentence was commuted on appeal , and the thug was released in 2016.

According to the indictment with Trainor, the pair admitted converting and transferring £78,000 (pounds) and €50,000.

None of the facts leading to the charges were revealed in court when Traynor finally pleaded guilty, but when he was first charged in July 2020, the prosecution’s case was described by KC Robin Steer as “an important participant in an organized a criminal group and a high-ranking drug dealer.” dealer”.

A Europe-wide investigation known as Operation Genetic saw hundreds of criminals arrested across the continent, but in Northern Ireland, Trainor, O’Loughlin and dozens of others were detained after French police cracked the previously encrypted Encrochat network.

Users were given a code name and phone to access the encrypted network, and that phone could only communicate with other similarly encrypted phones where subscribers paid thousands to access the item, believing their nefarious activities were safe from prying eyes.

In the Traynor case, he used the code names “Genghis Khan and Barnbrak” and investigators found “a large amount of conversations about transporting cash and drugs.”

Although police never had the physical tube, NCA officers obtained data from it which they then used to link Trainor to her, including images he had taken of a weight bench and a Peloton exercise bike.

During a search of Trainor’s home, he pulled him out the back door, but was arrested the next day and officers noticed he had the same weight bench and peloton machine.

As well as the drug talk, officers also discovered reports of “large sums of cash” being moved and exchanged for sums in excess of £100,000.

While talking to another user about renting a property, Trainor advises them to “tell the landlord you’re a friend of Rory T”, followed by another message stating that T stands for Trainor.

The court heard that the data contained reports of “shipments leaving from the Netherlands or boxes going to Spain”.

“We are talking about changing large amounts of cash – 125,000. Pounds sterling, or 35 thousand Pounds sterling, and 55 thousand Pounds sterling,” said Mr Steer, who revealed that in 2015 Trainor was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for three years, for a series of money-laundering offences. committed in 2008 and 2009.

Trainor hit the headlines in the UK and Ireland when his small bureau de change was used to launder a whopping £60m of dirty drug money,

In less than three years, Trainor’s Best Rate Bureau de Change, a small two-room flat-roofed office hidden behind a hedge on the Old Dublin Road in Newry, converted a total of £63 million for organized crime gangs. , mainly dealing in drugs.

Customs raids at Trainor’s home in 2009 revealed £150,000 in bundles of notes and he was eventually caught in an undercover operation exchanging wads of cash in a Belfast car park.

Despite pleading guilty to a multi-million pound money-laundering operation, Trainor walked free from Newry Crown Court with a suspended jail term but was also subject to a serious crime prevention order.

In court on Wednesday, Mr Connor asked for an adjournment to allow the Probation Commission time to prepare a pre-sentence report.

KC Charles MacCreanor, prosecuting, suggested that since there was already an agreed basis for a guilty plea, “it might be helpful for probation” that they had that document before they wrote their report, “and it could be sent immediately to the probation service”.

Remanding Traynor in custody, Judge Neil Rafferty KC advised the 48-year-old to be “as open and honest as possible” with the PBNI “so that I have as much information as possible before I sentence you” on January 31 next year.

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