A senior member of Limerick’s notorious McCarthy-Dundon gang has been jailed for 15 years for his role in a kidnap and blackmail plot and possessing a firearm in the UK.
Ger Dundon, 36, also known as Darren McClean, was described by the sentencing judge at Wood Green Crown Court as a “career criminal who played a central figure in the events” that occurred during the plot to kidnap and blackmail two brothers.
“You were prepared to use the threat of extreme violence to achieve your goal – here it was to take money from the men in a cruel and vicious way,” said Judge Dodd.
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Gangster Dundon – whose trial took place from November 8, 2022, until January 22 this year – was a close associate of notorious gangland figure Cornelius Price.
Price – who died in February after a lengthy brain illness – was also charged and suspected of being a main player in the plot.
However, Price was too ill to attend the trial at the time.
Dundon was found guilty of conspiring to kidnap one of two brothers in the UK – as well as conspiring to blackmail both men.
Earlier, Dundon, who has addresses in Ireland and in Cambridgeshire in the UK, was cleared of two charges of kidnap.
Before the trial, Dundon pleaded guilty to possessing a gun and ammunition in the UK on May 14, 2022; driving while disqualified in July 2020 in the UK, theft of an electric bike in November 2021 and assaulting a police officer on May 20, 2022.
Dundon was the only one out of five associates of Price who was found guilty for his plot to kidnap and blackmail two brothers following a lengthy trial.
Drogheda criminal Mark Kavanagh, 34, – who has been described in an affidavit filed to the High Court – as “a prominent member of the Price-Maguire Organised Crime Group,” was acquitted of conspiring to falsely imprison the brothers and conspiracy to blackmail them.
Three others – Danny Bridges, 41, of Stourport-on-Severn; Lisa Finnerty, 39, of Lancashire; and Quincey Bramble, 33, of East London – were also acquitted of their charges.
The trial previously heard how the suspected killer of hitman Robbie Lawlor was sending a contact to meet one of the alleged victims to clear a debt he owed.
However, when the victim, who cannot be named, went to London with his brother to meet the contact of Warren Crossan to have the €8,440 (£7,500 STG) debt paid to him, he and his brother both claimed they were kidnapped.
Crossan, 28, from Belfast, was subsequently shot dead on June 27, 2021 in an unrelated incident.
Crossan was targeted in what is believed to have been a revenge attack following the murder of feared criminal Lawlor – who was heavily involved in the Drogheda feud and was the chief suspect in the murder and dismemberment of 17-year-old Keane Mulready Woods – in Ardoyne in April 2020.
The jury heard how the two brothers were kidnapped, blindfolded, threatened with having their fingers sliced off and threatened with bullets in their head.
They claimed they were held at a caravan site at Smithy Fen in Cambridgeshire in July 2020.
They said Dundon told them he “would splatter their brains all over the road.”
They had been fed sleeping tablets, made to wash with Dettol spray and forced to call their relatives to try to get the money for their release, jurors heard.
One of the brothers claimed he was released on July 13, 2020, to collect up to €337,600 (£300k STG) in ransom money for the release of his brother.
Three days later on July 16, armed police intercepted a yellow Transit van driven by Dundon leaving the Smithy Fen site where they discovered the older brother lying on a mattress in the rear of the van.
Dundon claimed the brother was “sleeping in the back of my van by choice,” and “were pretending to have been kidnapped.”
“It was all a plan by one of the brothers to get money from people he knew so he could repay a debt,” Dundon alleged. Details of Dundon’s previous convictions were outlined at the court hearing including five years in prison in 2011 for violent disorder and five years in 2018 for possessing a sawn off shotgun.
Dundon was sentenced to ten years for the kidnap and blackmail offences and five years for possessing a firearm and ammunition while on bail in May 2022 to run consecutively.
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