A man who attained infamy as Ireland’s biggest money launderer has admitted a catalogue of fresh offences after he was scooped in the Europe-wide investigation into the Encrochat network.
With a jury sworn in and ready to hear the trial of Rory Patrick James Trainor at Coleraine Crown Court, defence KC Neil Connor asked for all bar two charges to be put to the 48-year-old again.
Trainor, currently on remand in HMP Maghaberry but with an address at Dunbrae in Newry, entered guilty pleas to a total of 39 charges including 20 money laundering offences and 19 drug offences, all committed between March 30 and June 10, 2020.
Even though he used the short form for many of the charges, it still took the court clerk almost 20 minutes to go through the indictment and to make sure that Trainor was aware of the charges and understood what he was confessing to.
Included in the drugs charges are:
– Five charges of being of being involved in importing cannabis and cocaine;
– Five charges of supplying or offering to supply cannabis;
– Eight charges of conspiring with others to possess cannabis with intent to supply and
– One charge of being concerned in the supply of cocaine.
In the charges relating to criminal property Trainor entered guilty pleas to:
– 14 counts of conspiring with others to transfer criminal property;
– Four charges of conspiring with others to convert criminal property;
– Single charges of possessing and transferring criminal property.
The figures on the particulars of the charges revealed that in just a three month period, Trainor was involved in laundering £1,321,700 and a further 50,000 Euros and further that in his drug dealing and money washing, he conspired with a dozen others.
While most are known only as pseudonyms or codewords such as knucklehead, snailmallet, Celticbhoy, square revolver and zammo Maguire, the first three charges relate to Trainor conspiring with Irish mobster Michael O’Loughlin.
Last April O’Loughlin, originally from Galway but who had been living in Co. Down when he was scooped, was handed a 12 year jail sentence after he admitted a similar litany of offences but his offending included a charge of conspiracy to murder.
He previously made headlines when he was jailed for nine years for membership of a criminal organisation in 2012 — the first such sentence in the Republic under then-new anti-gang legislation but that was decreased on appeal and the thug was freed in 2016.
On the indictment with Trainor, the pair admitted converting and transferring £78,000 (pounds) and 50,000 Euros.
None of the facts giving rise to the charges were opened in court when Trainor finally admitted his guilt but when he was first charged in July 2020, prosecuting KC Robin Steer described the defendant as “a significant mover in an organised crime gang and high tier drug dealer.”
In a Europe wide investigation known as Operation Genetic, hundreds of criminals were arrested across the continent but in Northern Ireland Trainor, O’Loughlin and dozens of other men were scooped after the French police hacked the previously encrypted Encrochat network.
Users were given a codename and a handset to access the encrypted network and that handset could only communicate with other, similarly encrypted handsets where subscribers paid thousands to access item believing their nefarious activities were safe from prying eyes.
In Trainor’s case, he used the codenames “Genghis Khan and Barnbrack” and investigators uncovered a “huge number of conversations about transporting cash and drugs.”
While police did not ever have the physical handset, NCA officers had obtained data from it which they then used to link Trainor to it – including images he had taken of a weights bench and a Peloton cycling machine.
When Trainor’s house was raided, he legged it out the back door but was arrested the following day and officers noticed he had the same weights bench and the same peloton cycling machine.
In addition to conversations about drugs, officers also uncovered messages about moving and exchanging “large amounts of cash” for sums in excess of £100,000.
During a conversation with another user about renting a property, Trainor advises them to “tell the landlord that you are a friend of Rory T” which is followed up by another message saying the T stands for “Trainor.”
The court heard that within the data were messages about “transportation being sent from the Netherlands or crates being sent out to Spain.”
“There’s reference to changing large amounts of cash – £125k or £35k and £55k,” said Mr Steer who revealed that in 2015, Trainor was handed a two year prison sentence, suspended for three years, for a series of money laundering offences committed in 2008 and 2009.
Trainor hit the headlines across the UK and Ireland when his little bureau de change was used to launder a whopping £60million of dirty drug money,
In less than the space of three years Trainor’s “Best Rate Bureau de Change,” a little two-roomed, flat-roofed office hidden behind a hedge on the Old Dublin Road in Newry, converted a total of £63million pounds for organised crime gangs, mainly involved in drugs.
Raids by customs officers on Trainor’s home in 2009 uncovered £150,000 in bundles of notes and he was eventually caught during an undercover operation where he was recorded exchanging parcels of cash in a Belfast car park.
Despite pleading guilty to the multi million pound money laundering operation, Trainor walked free from Newry Crown Court with a suspended prison sentence but he was also made the subject of a Serious Crime Prevention Order.
In court on Wednesday, Mr Connor asked for sentencing to be adjourned to allow time for the Probation Board to compile a pre-sentence report.
Prosecuting KC Charles MacCreanor suggested that with an agreed basis of plea already in place, “it may be helpful to probation” for them to have that document ahead of writing their report “and that can be forwarded to the probation Service forthwith.”
Remanding Trainor back into custody, Judge Neil Rafferty KC advised the 48-year-old to be “as open and as honest as you can be” with PBNI “so that I have as much information as possible before I come to sentence you” on 31 January next year.
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