From rhino horn theft to tarmac scams and now forged Covid test results – the Rathkeale Rovers gang’s criminal reach extends worldwide

However over the past decade, the gang expanded its operations and became a major player on a global scale with tentacles stretching into the United States, Australia and Asia.

The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) has issued tax demands against over a dozen members of the gang, with the total bill well over €10m.

In recent years in Ireland, alleged links between a small number of gardaí in the south of the country and associates of the crime group have formed part of a massive corruption investigation being led by the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI).

This week’s alert from Europol was not based on specific intelligence from gardaí who have been investigating their activities for at least 30 years but was based on information compiled from a number of European police forces.

On Monday, the agency warned that the Rathkeale Rovers are involved in using a mobile application which allows them to manually falsify test results.

The Rathkeale Rovers are involved in labour exploitation, counterfeiting, tarmac scams, tobacco smuggling and the theft of rhino horn and rare Chinese cultural artefacts, Europol has previously said.

The massively wealthy gang was previously the prime target of one of Europol’s largest ever investigations involving other international agencies.

In total, 31 members of the gang were arrested, with 69 cases linked to the theft of rhino horns being identified under Operation Oakleaf.

In 2016, several members of the gang were also jailed in the UK over the theft of €73m worth of jade and rhino horn artefacts in England.

They are the chief suspects in the theft of rhino horns from a National Museum storage facility in Swords, north Co Dublin, in April 2013 in which eight horns, with a black-market street value of €500,000, were stolen.

Their activities also include drugs trafficking and violent extortion offences in Ireland.

In relation to a different scam, in December 2018 gardaí from the NBCI, backed up by local units, struck properties in Rathkeale.

Gardaí said the scam involved €360,000 worth of vintage cars and targeted mainly elderly people.

On that occasion, buyers were told they would be receiving top-of-the-range motors advertised online but these vehicles never existed.

Gardaí moved in on the gang and arrested four men suspected of involvement in the operation.

They also seized 20 vehicles in the swoop.

That scam consists of fraud around the purchase and sale of vintage and classic cars aged in excess of 50 years.

“They are into everything, that crew, from drugs to burglaries to tarmac scams,” a Garda source told Independent.ie today.

However, before this week’s announcement by Europol, it was the gang’s involvement in the multi-million-euro theft of rhino horns that made it a prime target for international police forces.

Last May gang member John Slattery (31) was jailed in Texas after being extradited from Ireland to the United States following his arrest in Rathkeale by around 20 armed gardaí.

US authorities said that he and two others travelled to a taxidermy shop in Austin, Texas, to buy the horns. They said that the men bought the horns for $18,000 and then travelled to New York and sold them for $50,000.

They said that between April 2010 and November 2010, Slattery bought two further horns from an individual for $10,000.

And that in 2010, Slattery and his co-accused travelled to an auction house in Macon, Missouri, where they allegedly obtained a consignment of horns from endangered white and black rhinos.

He had been initially been identified as a suspect in 2010 but later fled the States, moved to France and changed his name to John Flynn.

He was later tracked down by investigators and arrested in Paris but then fled France before he was tracked down by gardaí last year.

His brother Michael (30) served a 14-month sentence in the US for the same offence in 2015, as well as fellow Rathkeale Rovers gang member Patrick ‘Crying Dan’ Sheridan who received a year in jail for trafficking rhino horns in the United States.

In May 2016, 13 members of the gang were sentenced in England after they were convicted of plotting to steal up to €73m worth of rhino horn and Chinese artefacts in a series of museum raids in 2012.

Birmingham Crown Court heard that the conspiracy had spanned England, Scotland and Ireland, and said members of the O'Brien family, based in Rathkeale, had been at the heart of that conspiracy.

Among the ringleaders given significant sentences were Richard ‘Kerry’ O'Brien, John ‘Cash’ O'Brien, Daniel 'Turkey’ O'Brien and Daniel Flynn.

Alongside the men in the dock was 56-year-old Donald Wong, described by the judge as “a buyer, seller and valuer”.

In December of the same year, gardaí seized a Chinese rhino cup and €100,000 in cash during a raid in Rathkeale.

In November 2017, gang member Michael Hegarty was jailed for 18 months by a federal court in Miami, for smuggling a “libation cup” carved from a rhino horn from the US to London, after he was extradited to the United States from Belgium.

Police forces in Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the US are involved in the ongoing investigations and are liaising with Garda colleagues.

Members of the gang move across the world throughout the year and only return to Rathkeale each Christmas when the population of the town trebles.

According to a report commissioned by the World Wildlife Federation, by 2012 the black-market price of rhino horn had risen to as much as €55,000 per kilogram – valued at more than gold, platinum, diamonds, or cocaine at that time.

This is because of the huge demand for it in Asia where some communities believe that it has far-reaching medicinal qualities, with some believing its ingestion can even cure terminal injuries.

While the Rathkeale Rovers were not the first criminal organisation to take advantage of this situation, they became one of the most dominant on a global scale, primarily targeting museums across Europe where horns were stolen in late-night raids.

One of the first times that law enforcement agencies became aware of the gang’s involvement in this type of crime was almost 11 years ago when Rathkeale brothers Michael and Jeremiah O'Brien were caught with eight horns in their luggage at an airport in Portugal.

While the Rathkeale Rovers were one of the first crime organisations to see the value in trading in rhino horn, it now seems they are one of the first to jump on a Europe-wide Covid scam which has the potential to cause chaos as countries desperately attempt to fight the deadly pandemic.