Home / Case Files / Oleksandr Strymbu
Reporter competition twenty-one entrant

Oleksandr Strymbu: €1 million in six bags, a counting machine and a five-year sentence

The Ukrainian national collected bags for a relative and stored €1,058,575 in suspected criminal proceeds in his Dublin bedroom. A judge rejected the description of a minor courier, called him a vital cog trusted with an enormous sum and imposed five years.

Published 26 July 2026 · Remigration Ireland case ledger
€1,058,575Proceeds handled
6 bagsCash in his bedroom
€25,900Additional upstairs cash
5 yearsIrish sentence

This was not a bank account passively lent to someone else. Strymbu drove to collection points, exchanged Ukrainian notes for bags, transported the bags and stored more than a million euro beside a cash-counting machine.

More than €1 million in a rented house

Gardaí searched the Beverly Downs, Knocklyon house on 13 June 2024. Six shopping and gift bags containing more than €1 million were plainly visible in Strymbu’s converted-ground-floor bedroom. Some cash was vacuum-packed and some bound with elastic bands. A counting machine stood on the coffee table.

A further €25,900 was found in an upstairs bedroom. The amount attributed to Strymbu’s guilty plea was €1,058,575 in proceeds of crime.

The collection system

Strymbu told Gardaí that his housemate and brother-in-law directed him to make collections for several weeks. He drove a van to various locations, handed Ukrainian banknotes to a person and received a bag in return, which he left in his room for somebody else to collect.

He said he did not know the amount or source and was paid only in fuel and meals. Gardaí believed the money came from the drugs trade. The court convicted and sentenced him for handling the proceeds; the suspected drugs origin remained Garda evidence rather than a separate drugs conviction against Strymbu.

“Vital cog”, not low-level courier

Defence counsel described Strymbu as a courier low in the hierarchy. Judge Martin Nolan disagreed. He said Strymbu was at least in the middle and would have needed substantial trust to handle that amount of money. The judge called him a vital cog in the organisation.

Strymbu pleaded guilty to handling the €1,058,575. Dublin Circuit Criminal Court imposed five years on 3 April 2025.

Origin and mitigation

Irish reporting expressly identifies Strymbu as Ukrainian. He had a physical-education degree, had worked in Britain and then in Irish construction, and intended to support his wife and two children in Ukraine. He had no reported previous convictions.

The court heard that he worked in the prison kitchen, attended school and had positive references. Those matters formed part of mitigation; they did not erase the deliberate collections or scale of the cash entrusted to him.

Case chronology

Prison-space cost illustration

The Irish Prison Service’s 2024 average was €99,072 per available staffed prison space, excluding capital expenditure. The documented period from the June 2024 arrest to sentencing in April 2025 represents roughly €79,700 at that later flat benchmark. A conditional five-year sentence-length illustration is €495,360.

Neither amount is an audited bill. The full-term figure assumes all five years in custody and ignores remission, release arrangements and changing annual costs. The figures exclude Garda investigation, prosecution, court, legal aid and the wider costs of the suspected criminal organisation. The €1,058,575 seized is evidence and criminal proceeds, not a prison expense.

What the record does not say

The sources establish Ukrainian nationality, work in Britain and Ireland, and an Irish conviction. They do not establish asylum status, temporary-protection status, unlawful presence, deportation proceedings or a removal decision. This file makes none of those claims.

Sources