Extortionist caught stealing puppy vax cards denies sinister criminal past

Convicted extortionist and fraudster William Mongan, aka William Ward in previous criminal cases, is due to be sentenced this Thursday at Lisburn Magistrates Court for stealing puppy vaccination cards from a vet in Moira.

And we can reveal today William Mongan/Ward is a pathological liar and once tried to scam half a dozen men into handing over cash after tricking them through dating sites to send intimate images.

In the puppy cards case, Mongan claimed he took ill and became suicidal in the vet’s office and stole one card to write a suicide note but the judge suspects he was stealing them to be used in the illegal puppy trade.

Last Wednesday the Sunday World called at Mongan/Ward’s Dunmurry home to ask him for his side of the story and to ask about previous convictions including his involvement in illegal puppy trading in Scotland and also blackmailing people over intimate images.

After being invited in by his wife, who said William had been “having a nap”, Mongan/Ward admitted he’d stolen the puppy cards but flatly denied he had any previous convictions for anything more serious than careless driving.

“I’ve nothing to do with any blackmail case and I’ve never been involved in puppy farming,” he told the Sunday World.

“You must have the wrong William Mongan – there’s four William Mongans in Belfast you know.”

We left Mongan/Ward’s home after about ten minutes with him insisting our information about his past was incorrect.

He called us an hour later and once again politely told us we’d got him mixed up with someone else.

However, when we told him we believed we were not mistaken – he hung up and hatched a desperate plan to make completely false allegations against a journalist who was only doing his job.

Around two hours later the PSNI called the reporter to inform him Mongan/Ward and his wife Eileen had made an allegation that a Sunday Worldjournalist had come to his house, forced entry by pushing over his wife at the front door, that she subsequently fell and hurt her arm, and then the reporter refused to leave until William had given him a statement.

The two constables who visited his home told the reporter the couple had made statements to the PSNI and they were duty bound to investigate.

Of course, none of what Mongan/Ward said actually happened and instead the reporter told bare-faced liar Mongan, after being asked politely to sit down in their living room, that they were under no obligation to speak to us at all.

And at all times the conversation was amicable.

In fact at one point Mongan/Ward told the reporter when he said he was going to leave, “stay here, I want to phone my solicitor and I want to know about these blackmail allegations”.

What Ward/Mongan didn’t realise was the reporter had a photographer outside taking pictures of both he and his wife talking to the reporter at the front door without incident and without having to force his way in.

Mongan/Ward found himself back in court last week for what seemed a bizarre, and on the face of it innocuous, theft of puppy vaccination cards.

But during the District Judge Rosie Watters commented the crime is “very strange... it makes sense once you are aware that they have a value”.

“These things are used to import puppies into this jurisdiction,” said the eagle-eyed judge, “there’s a scam going on in relation to puppies.”

Ward/Mongan, from Cherry Close in Dunmurry, had earlier entered a guilty plea to a single count of theft in that on August 20, 2021, he stole “puppy healthcare cards to the value of an unknown amount or thereabouts belonging to Lagan Valley Vets”.

Last Monday, a prosecuting lawyer outlined how Ward/Mongan attended the practice in Main Street in Moira with his dog but once inside a consultation room, he claimed “he felt unwell” so the vet went to get a colleague to get help.

When they returned back into the room, they noticed that Ward/Mongan had “taken a handful of vaccination cards” and had stuffed them into his pocket.

When they asked him to put them back, “he denied taking them and became aggressive” until he eventually left but CCTV captured both him and his car registration. Arrested and interviewed, Ward/Mongan “did accept the theft”.

Defence solicitor Ruaidhri Currie told the court that according to Ward/ Mongan, he was taken so unwell that he became suicidal so had lifted not a handful but one vaccination card “to write a suicide note”.

But District Judge Watters was quick to pull him up on that claim.

“Yes, I see that was his explanation to probation but frankly, I don’t believe it,” said DJ Watters.

He inquired “what happened in Scotland, in Inverness, was that not something to do with puppies?”

“I got the impression, and I could be wrong, but was that not something to do with the puppy trade?” asked the judge.

While Mr Currie said he “was not entirely sure,” Ward/Mongan himself claimed “it was for careless driving”.

It’s clear from Ward/Mongan’s criminal record, however, that with 12 previous convictions for blackmail and fraud that he has a mere passing acquaintance with the truth.

In 2019 Ward/Mongan used his technological prowess to create a handful of fake dating profiles in Tinder, Badoo and Fabswingers, posing as women, a man and as a couple in order to blackmail half a dozen men.

Following the same general modus operandi in each blackmail plot, Ward/Mongan created profiles, uploaded fake pictures he downloaded from a pornographic website and then engaged in online flirty texts and chats with the unsuspecting victims.

Claiming to want “no strings attached fun,” Ward/Mongan told one guy he wanted him to “come and f***me in the car” while in another he claimed “the three Ds is what a want – drinks, dinner and you can guess the last”.

In each case, Ward/Mongan downloaded sexually explicit pictures of models and sent them to his victims to entice them to send equally explicit pictures in return.

shame

As soon as they did, that’s when the blackmails started with Ward/Mongan threatening to “name and shame them” and send the pictures to their friends and families, threatening he would out them as talking to an underage girl.

Thankfully, none of the victims actually paid him any cash but were left extremely worried and embarrassed about it.

The police didn’t find it too difficult to trace the extortion plots back to Ward/Mongan as in one instance, he demanded the victim pay him £500 into his mum’s PayPal account, in another he used her bank account details while in another, he used the same mobile phone number cops had on record for him.

Arrested and interviewed, Ward/Mongan initially claimed he had no idea what the detectives were talking about but as the questions sessions progressed, he admitted “I done it... I was drunk... I can’t really remember doing it to be honest with you”.

“I was literally drunk, it was just stupidity,” Ward/Mongan claimed and lamented: “I don’t want my wife, I don’t want my family to know about this.”

In September 2019 at Craigavon Crown Court, Ward/Mongan was handed an 18-month sentence for seven counts of blackmail committed between March 22 and April 25, 2018 with an order to serve half in jail and half on licence.

Jailing the extortionist, Judge Patrick Lynch KC said blackmail is always a serious offence because it “preys in the soul of a victim” and in this case, Ward/Mongan’s offences were aggravated as there were multiple victims, the impact upon them and the “obvious premeditation” of the offences.