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Key member of Ireland’s most prolific burglary gang forced to hand over house to CAB

CAB seizes house from serial burglar who paid cash for €165k bungalow

Today at 06:55

A key member of Ireland’s most prolific burglary gang has been forced to hand over a house bought with his ill-gotten gains.

Patrick Wall had bought the semi-detached bungalow for €166,500 in cash despite not having had any income to explain his wealth.

A close associate of infamous burglar Edward ‘The Bullet’ Connors, Wall is suspected of carrying out dozens of break-ins all over Ireland.

‘The Bullet’, a cousin of slain mobster ‘Fat’ Andy Connors, is one of the country’s most prolific burglars and has amassed dozens of convictions over the years.

Known as the ‘Pale Miley Gang’, the group was the top target in a garda effort to shut down robbery gangs under Operation Fiacla launched ten years ago.

They were notorious for using high-speed cars to carry out raids and to outpace pursuing patrol cars.

Despite being arrested with ‘The Bullet’ 28 times, Wall was convicted of just five break-ins during his criminal career.

But a Criminal Assets Bureau case last year revealed how Wall and the gang operated across the four provinces and created terror in rural Ireland.

Wall and his wife Tina, who was also named in the CAB action, settled the case last December. CAB had targeted a property in Newbridge and a site in Crumlin.

It was detailed how Wall has 39 criminal convictions, including eight which resulted in a prison sentence.

Wall was jailed for 10 months in 2011 after a high-speed chase in Donegal in which the suspects abandoned a car at Ballyshannon and one man swam across a river into Northern Ireland while the others fled into fields.

Wall was arrested the next day and given 10 months in prison for two burglaries in the county, ending a spate of robberies in the north-west of the country.

He was linked to 29 burglaries in Galway, Roscommon, Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal from July until his arrest in September that year.

In his affidavit to the court, a garda said the burglaries “makes it clear that members of the investigation team believe him to be part of a prolific burglary gang that terrorised certain parts of rural Ireland during this period.”

The CAB investigation also uncovered how a vulnerable elderly man paid €3,400 into Wall’s bank account in 2015. This cash was part of the money used to buy the house in Newbridge in 2016.

When officers went to find out why the man had done so, his niece told them he had been the victim of a fraud, according to CAB.

The man, who was in his 80s at the time, paid money to people who had called to his house saying money was owed for work on his house. He gave them €120,000 in total between 2015 and 2018 until the gardai were alerted.

It was also found that both Patrick Wall and Tina Wall were awarded insurance compensation payouts totalling €70,000 between them from traffic accidents between 2006 and 2019.

From June 2018 to June 2019 the couple lived in the United States, overstaying their tourist visas, according to the CAB case, and continued to illegally claim child benefit payments.

They were paid rent of between €1,200 and €1,400 a month for the Newbridge property, lodged €33,881 from a US bank into an Irish account and had €50,000 in their account on their return from the US.

During the search of their own residence in Tallaght in 2021, officers found the couple had gone through the process of changing their names by deed poll to Patrick and Tina Connors.

They told officers they had done so because of a falling out with the Wall family from Carlow and wanted to distance themselves from them.

An investigating officer said US immigration officials confirmed the couple had overstayed their visa and were no longer allowed to enter America.

“This explains the change of name by deed poll undertaken by both respondents.”

During the same search Tina Wall was found to have concealed €2,300 in her underwear which it was claimed was from the sale of three dogs.

In evidence, the Bureau’s Chief Officer, Michael Gubbins, stated that Patrick Wall is involved in serious criminality and “has a history of committing burglaries and of criminal associations with individuals who are also known to be serial burglars.”