https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41821085.html

Money-laundering networks worth millions of euros and international online scams are being targeted by one small Garda unit, which has brought hundreds of prosecutions in the last three years.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly accelerating online economic crime and fraud, which now targets almost everyone in Ireland, Detective Inspector Brian Downey said.

An economic crime unit was established three years ago in Det Insp Downey’s station in Balbriggan, Dublin, in response to rapid growth in these crimes.

Local drug dealers are now being linked to money-laundering operations by the economic crime unit and gardaí there are “going after those funds”.

Drug dealers and other criminals rely on money-laundering to 'clean' their money and therefore protect their profits.

Although the Balbriggan unit is very small, it now has just three detectives, it has brought more than 200 prosecutions.

Previously, there were just three economic crime cases in that area, Mr Downey said.

“We looked at the money that was going through, and we were able to identify €5m going through one district in relation to money-laundering,” he said.

“We were able to identify 120 people that were all smishing that money around, and actually moving it, and withdrawing it through ATMs. And they were laundering the money, the proceeds of crime.

And you have different agencies and international groups and criminals who are going in taking your money out of your account. And we’re following that up.

If economic crime units were established across the country, gardaí could dismantle money-laundering networks nationally, he said.

Det Insp Downey said the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) is calling for similar economic crime units to be established in garda divisions across the country.

“It's one of the growing crimes that we have to respond to. And by setting up these units, we can actually take the legs from underneath the fraudsters and try to address it.”

Although crime rates fell generally last year, according to Central Statistics Office data, economic crime has been “bucking that trend” and is escalating rapidly, Det Insp Downey said.

“We've all experienced the phishing [email and online scams] and the smishing [SMS text message based scams] and people are losing a fortune, thousands [of Euros],” he said.

“I think every week one of us gets a false call on the phone, we get a text message or we're asked to click a link.

And it's nearly all manufactured by AI now. Everybody's getting them.

“People are becoming susceptible to fraud and that money's being taken out of their account.”

Although An Garda Síochána has competing priorities for manpower, Det Insp Downey said the example of the unit in Balbriggan proved investing resources in this area was very productive.

“They're very effective. We've got a unit, and they're very small but they're really, really good. It's [...] a great way of dealing with that type of crime."

Irish small and medium-sized businesses lost almost €19m to online fraud in the last two years, according to FraudSMART.

Fraud offences spiked by 73% in the first six months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, according to Garda crime statistics.

The fraud crime of forgery or false instruments jumped by 200%; "deception or other" frauds increased by 178%; shopping or online auction fraud rose by 166%, and money laundering increased by 82% over this period.

CSO data published on March 26 found in the last quarter of 2025, there were 11,133 recorded cases of fraud, deception and related offences.

Although this was a 3% drop from the 11,456 fraud cases in the last three months of 2024, the CSO noted these figures only accounted for offences reported directly to gardaí by the public and did not include those reported by financial institutions, meaning the figures could be significantly higher.