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Fiddling solicitor struck off

A SOLICITOR who took money from the dead for work he had not carried out has been thrown out of the profession. Christopher Dudzinski, 49, of Dudzinski and Partners, Butts Court, Leeds, claimed thousands of pounds from the estates of late clients and ploughed the cash into his firm. Investigators found he also told customers he was investing their money when in fact it was being kept in the firm's accounts. Financial records were not properly written up and an investigation in 2006 revealed a £25,975 'black hole' in the client accounts. Dudzinski accepted he withdrew clients' money before he billed them for his work, the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal in London heard. "A large part of the shortfall, £21,230, was in respect of costs transferred from client to office account in circumstances where bills had not been delivered to the client," said Jonathan Goodwin, for the Solicitors' Disciplinary Authority. Dudzinski was acting for the executors of a will when he took £2,350 from the estate of a dead man after his affairs had been completed. When questioned, the lawyer said he thought he deserved more for the work done previously.

Yorkshire Evening Post

01 Apr

News organisation in new bid to overturn 'obscene' no win, no fee libel

A group of 22 organisations is lobbying the government for radical change in the regime controlling the Conditional Fee Agreement system under which lawyers bring libel claims against media groups on a no-win, no-fee basis, it has emerged. The disclosure came as David Price, of Fleet Street-based law firm David Price Solicitors and Advocates, discussed the workings of and reasons for the Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) system at the IBC Defamation Conference in London on March 11. The CFA system allows lawyers to bring libel cases against media organisations, on behalf of claimants who otherwise could not afford to sue, on a no-win, no-fee basis. If the case succeeds, the defendant pays the claimant's costs. But the defendant also then has to pay the solicitors a "success fee" which can be as much as their normal fee - meaning that the solicitor charges up to double his normal fees, taking the charges to as much as £900 per hour for a partner in a law firm.

Press Gazette

27 Mar

Crackdown on £20bn a year fraud

Fraud is costing the UK £20bn a year, the police say, as they plan to expand their efforts to tackle it. The City of London Police is recruiting for a national fraud crime force, claiming that the impact of the crime is second only to drug trafficking. The move comes after a report by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) put UK mortgage fraud losses at £700m a year, and growing.

BBC

26 Mar

Britain among the world's 50 main money laundering countries, says US

The US government has placed the UK alongside Afghanistan, Colombia and Russia on a list of countries that need to do more to crack down on money laundering, it emerged yesterday. According to the US state department's international narcotics control strategy report, Britain is one of more than 50 "major money-laundering countries", thanks largely to its role as a leading global financial centre. The report highlights figures from the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) which show that £15bn of dirty money is laundered in the UK each year. Although it praises the UK's high street banks for tightening their anti-laundering controls, the report warns that criminals are increasingly turning to card fraud, cash-smuggling and bureaux de change to process the proceeds of their activities.

Guardian

22 Mar

Buy-to-let investors who fear they may be left homeless

Buy-to-let investors are facing their hardest times since amateur landlords first hit the scene in force a decade ago. Property values are falling, rents are static, and interest rates are on the way up - assuming buy-to-letters can find mortgages now that many lenders have toughened up their criteria.
But for many investors - including Chris Miller and Geoff Morris - it's more than belt-tightening that's needed. Unless they can pull out a last-minute rabbit, it's game over and personal ruin. They have already lost the properties they believed would provide them with riches. Now they also risk their own homes and other assets. Their stories are far from unique. Thousands of would-be amateur landlords are in a similar position.

Guardian

22 Mar

Judge's second sex case referred

A second child sex case involving the judge who jailed for two years a man who raped a girl of 10 has been referred to the Court of Appeal. The case involves a supervision order imposed by Judge Julian Hall on a youth of 17 who abused two children. The Solicitor General confirmed the case, heard in January, would be referred to the Court of Appeal. Last year it doubled a two-year term imposed by the judge on a child rapist describing it as unduly lenient.

BBC

22 Mar

Seven years jail for lawyer who siphoned £900,000 from wills to feather his nest

A crooked lawyer has been jailed for seven years after he looted £900,000 from wills and cash meant for charity so he could send his children to public school, stock up with vintage wines and drive a classic sports car. In the course of 28 years, Michael Wright, now 66, doubled or trebled his actual salary. He set up seven false identities to channel the money from wills and had the power to sign cheques paying legacies to their bank accounts. When families complained or became suspicious he simply stole from other estates to pay them what they were owed, Exeter Crown Court was told. The lawyer, officially on £29,000 a year, was caught when his employers, solicitors Harold Mitchelmore of Newton Abbot, Devon, introduced a new audit system.

Daily Mail

20 Mar

Fraud magistrate gets 18 months

A magistrate has been jailed for 18 months after admitting telling a contact he could delay his court case in return for a £50,000 payment. Balbir Sandu, 63, who had been a lay Wolverhampton magistrate, was sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court after pleading guilty to the fraud charge.

BBC

19 Mar

Couple stripped of £5million

A Weybridge solicitor and his wife have been stripped of £5.3million of criminal assets hidden overseas. The Assets Recovery Agency was granted a High Court order to take the money from John and Susan Ann Szepietowski of Ashford House, Four Winds Park, St George's Hill, following an investigation prompted by a separate drugs trafficking and money laundering probe by Surrey Police. The ARA alleged the Szepietowskis had amassed a large property portfolio through fraudulent mortgage claims and the laundering of rental income through offshore accounts. It also alleged that the Szepietowskis benefited from a phoenix fraud scam, involving the publishing of adult magazines, and that their lavish lifestyle greatly exceeded their known legitimate income. Solicitor Mr Szepietowski and his former building society manager wife entered negotiations with the ARA in October last year.

Wimbledon Guardian

17 Mar

Lawyers who cashed in on miners' compensation fund donated to Brown dinner

A law firm representing injured miners, which has earned itself £123million in controversial Government payouts, has donated money to Gordon Brown's constituency party by sponsoring a table at a fundraising dinner. Thompsons solicitors – which has been accused by Labour MPs of being part of a legal "feeding frenzy" to "milk" the £4billion compensation scheme for injured miners – sponsored the table at one of Mr Brown's local party fundraising events in 2006. The disclosure, which is revealed in Mr Brown's 2007 constituency party accounts, will add to growing criticism of the fund's administration and fuel demands for greater transparency over political donations. Thompsons paid £650 towards the dinner in the Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency on May 19, 2006. The event gave diners the opportunity to hear Douglas Alexander, who is now the International Development Secretary...Earlier this month, the Commons Public Accounts Committee condemned Ministers for "seriously mismanaging" the scheme after 750,000 people claimed – instead of the expected 218,000. Two-thirds of the claims have cost more to administer than the amounts paid out and some applications have taken so long to process, the former miners have died before they could get their cash. The total cost of the scheme is expected to rise to £6.4billion, with solicitors receiving an astonishing £1.3billion to process the claims. Edward Leigh, the Tory chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said the Government should have been "a lot tougher" with solicitors on the conditions attached to their fees. Thompsons has made more out of the scheme than any other law firm, receiving a total of £123.6million so far.

Daily Mail

16 Mar

Crooked veteran solicitor struck off

A CROOKED solicitor took almost £100,000 from bereaved clients and used the cash to pay her tax bill, a hearing was told. University of Huddersfield law lecturer Lorraine Miers, 49, blamed her cheating husband for financial difficulties when he had an affair with her student, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard. Yesterday she was struck off and ordered to pay costs of £10,000.

Yorkshire Evening Post

14 Mar

Detective jailed over card fraud

A senior detective found guilty of misusing police credit cards has been sentenced to three years in prison. Det Ch Insp Peter Salkeld, 42, of Shoreham, was found guilty, after a five-week trial, of 11 charges relating to theft and deception. Maidstone Crown Court heard the charges related to use of a Sussex Police force credit card, used to buy personal goods over a nine month period. Sussex Police described Salkeld as "one greedy, dishonest individual".

BBC

14 Mar

Lawyer seeks £13m sex bias damages

A top City lawyer is seeking a record £13m ($26m) after winning a sex discrimination and harassment lawsuit against the fund manager F&C Asset Management. Gill Switalski, a 51-year-old mother of two disabled sons, says she was subjected to an 18-month campaign of bullying and intimidation over her working hours at the firm, which has nearly £104bn of assets under management. She is now claiming as much as £13.4m in damages for resulting psychiatric problems, loss of pension benefits and diminished career prospects after a London employment tribunal ruled that she was treated less favourably than a male colleague with a special needs child. That figure – nearly 100 times her annual salary of £140,000 – exceeds the £11m claimed by a former HBOS executive, Claire Bright, in a 2006 sex discrimination case, and is nearly double the £7.5m once sought by Stephanie Villalba, the former head of European private banking at Merrill Lynch. (While the victims of crooked lawyers still get nothing, or are ignored.UJ)

Financial Times

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Evening Standard

12 Mar

£7m mortgage scam rocks Midlands

A number of lenders and mortgage brokers in the West Midlands are reported to have fallen victim to a £7m mortgage scam. The perpetrators are thought to be a group of solicitors based in East London who in one instance managed to con almost £600,000 from an unsuspecting broker. Birmingham-based newspaper the Sunday Mercury reported on Sunday that pensioner Barbara Moody had her £750,000 Birmingham home refinanced by the fraudster without her knowledge. BM Solutions is reported to be one of the lenders caught up in the scam.

Mortgage Strategy

11 Mar

Barristers told: last chance to sign up for legal aid contract

The angry stand-off over new legal aid contracts — which threatens the running of heavyweight criminal trials including terrorism, murder and rape — comes to a head this week. The Legal Services Commission, which runs the legal aid scheme, has given barristers a final chance to sign up to the panel to do very high-cost cases — the most serious, complex and lengthy trials, which account for nearly 10 per cent of the criminal legal aid budget. Only 130 of 2,300 barristers who indicated interest in the scheme have signed up. The deadline has been extended to this Friday.

Times Online

11 Mar

SIF to become insurance claims-handling provider

The Solicitors' Indemnity Fund (SIF) is to become an insurance claims-handling provider in an effort to keep insurance rates down. Legal & Professional Claims (LPC) will be launched in June as a specialist professional indemnity (PI) claims company owned by the Law Society. The SIF, which was established to provide PI cover to all solicitors, was closed in 2000 with a surplus of £100m. Half of that money was handed back to the Law Society and the remainder returned to firms. The fund will be closed within five years after a small team finalises any outstanding claims against it.

The Lawyer

10 Mar

60 lawyers caught up in mortgage fraud crackdown

The Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA), the body that regulates the legal profession in England and Wales, is investigating up to 60 lawyers on suspicion of mortgage fraud. The crackdown comes after the regulator saw a substantial rise in the number of reports concerning specific solicitors suspected of mortgage fraud. Last year the SRA received 293 such reports, up from 85 in 2004. A spokesman said: “The SRA is investigating up to 60 solicitors who may have been involved in mortgage fraud.”

Times Online

06 Mar

Trustworthy, client-friendly and well paid - all signs of a lawyer?

What are solicitors for? Do they have public confidence and trust or are they seen more cynically as a bunch of rogues ready to fleece clients? Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, reminded an audience last night that even though the profession had moved on from Bleak House, there was still a view — as Dickens put it — that “the one great principle of English law is to make business for itself”.

Times Online

06 Mar

Organised crime turning to mortgage fraud

Mortgage fraud in the UK totalled £700m last year, the Association of Chief Police Officers said yesterday in a report that warned organised crime groups were increasingly targeting home loan providers. Mike Bowron, the commissioner of the City of London police force, said mortgage fraud had become increasingly popular with criminals because there was currently a relatively low risk of detection and the potential for very large profits. Criminals are also using the property markets to launder the proceeds of illegal activities, including the supply of drugs, people trafficking and prostitution, he said...The Acpo report says corrupt property professionals including surveyors, mortgage brokers and solicitors are facilitating frauds. Common crimes include surveyors deliberately over-valuing properties, applications made on the basis of forged documentation and the use of fraudulent lease contracts to inflate the value of commercial property artificially.

Independent

06 Mar

Britannia probes solicitors amid property fraud fears

Britannia Building Society is to launch a special unit to seek compensation from law firms and surveyors in relation to negligent advice on property deals. News of the launch comes as Eversheds faces a claim from the Bank of Ireland relating to advice said to be negligent that it gave on a property deal — the latest example of the growing trend for claims arising from fraudulent property transactions. Britannia’s loss recovery unit, which will go live in April, will investigate law firms and surveyors working on transactions where its lending arm, Platform, suffers substantial losses following the repossession and sale of a property or portfolio of properties.

Legal Week

06 Mar

Miners in 10-year wait for payout

Former miners have had to wait over 10 years for government compensation for pit-related illnesses, the Public Accounts Committee has found. Some of the men died while their claims were being processed because ministers underestimated the volume and complexity of their cases, it said. In the mean time solicitors earned more than £1.3bn in handling the claims. The highly critical report argues that more than 100,000 men are still waiting for payment of their settlements. Gross underestimation The committee's chair, Conservative MP Edward Leigh, accused the government of having "seriously mismanaged" the schemes in their early stages. The report said it was too slow and ill-prepared in to dealing with payments for men who suffered from lung disease or vibration white finger, which affects the circulation of the hands. In more than two thirds of cases, the average administration costs were higher than the amount of compensation. One solicitors' firm alone raked in almost £124m. The report said the government had expected about 218,000 claims for lung disease and white finger, but there have in fact been about 762,000 claims. Some of these were elderly and ill and in no position to wait for years for compensation Conservative MP Edward Leigh
Estimates of the amount of compensation had been put at about £614m, but it is thought the true cost once they are all settled will be about £4.1bn as well as a further £2.3bn in administration.
The report said the average time for a claim to be processed was about two years. Most of the remaining claims are expected to be settled by February next year. The Department for Business Enterprise, which administers the claims, said improvements had been made since the claim began. Mr Leigh said: "Its attempt to implement the schemes swiftly, combined with its underestimation of how many claims would be made and how complex some would be, resulted in many claimants having to wait a very long time for the compensation they were owed. "Some of these were elderly and ill and in no position to wait for years for compensation - in some cases 10 years or more. Some claimants even died while waiting. Far too much money went into the solicitors' pockets and our committee expects the department to be vigorous in pursuing them for the money Conservative MP Edward Leigh "The taxpayer has also taken a big hit, with the cost of just administering the schemes expected to total nearly £2.3bn." The compensation scheme was put in place after British Coal was found negligent in its treatment of ex-workers. But the government did not gather its own assessment of how many claims there were likely to be, or how much they would cost, instead relying on forecasts from British Coal. Neither did they realise that claims from miners who subsequently died would be payable to the miners' widows and families. 'An evil act' Mr Leigh added: "There are lessons aplenty here for other parts of government planning and implementing new compensation schemes. "Far too much money went into the solicitors' pockets and our committee expects the department to be vigorous in pursuing them for the money they have been ordered to repay."
Lord Lofthouse of Pontefract, who has long campaigned for miners compensation, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that it was solicitors who were most to blame. He said: "In fact I have no grumbles over the government, because as soon as an award was made, the government made money available. My complaint is with the solicitors." In what he described as "an evil act", Lord Lofthouse said firms often first charged the government, then raked money off the compensation awarded to the miners.

BBC

05 Mar

MINER'S COMPO
But his lucky lawyer picks up £1,974 from taxpayers

A miner was given just 50p compensation for chest disease - but his solicitor received £1,974 out of taxpayers' pockets. The lawyer's fee for the "price of a packet of crisps" award was branded "scandalous" yesterday. The compensation was the lowest among 800,000 claims under a scheme for miners hit by "coal dust" disease - who won an average of £5,000 each. But lawyers will have earned £1.3billion from the scheme by next year.

Mirror

05 Mar

Lawyers made over a bln from miners' scheme

LONDON (Reuters) - The government's failure to keep a lid on legal fees saw payments to lawyers spiral to over 1 billion pounds during its handling of compensation schemes for miners, a group of MPs said on Tuesday. A total of 4.1 billion pounds will have been paid in compensation to former miners for injuries related to coal dust and hand injuries. But another 1.3 billion pounds went on lawyers' fees, while a further 1 billion pounds went on administration and medical costs. Some miners had to wait more than 10 years for their money as the legal process ran its course, with some dying before receiving any compensation. "Far too much money went into the solicitors' pockets," said Edward Leigh, chairman of the committee of public accounts. The committee criticised the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, previously called the Department of Trade and Industry, for its "weakness" in negotiating with the lawyers. "The department's negotiation of the fees with solicitors was weak, with the result that it paid fees significantly in excess of costs." Some legal firms received fees from both the government and miners' compensation package, collecting as much as 124 million pounds in two cases. MPs also accused the department of "seriously mismanaging" the schemes, underestimating how many claims there would be and their complexity.

Reuters

04 Mar

Whitehall bungled miners' compensation, say MPs

Whitehall "seriously mismanaged" a £4bn compensation scheme for former miners suffering from lung disease and physical injuries, a report by a committee of MPs said yesterday. Two-thirds of the claims cost more to administer than the cash paid out and some claimants are still waiting for the money a decade after they put in the claim. Others died before they got the cash. The total cost of the scheme is expected to rise to £6.4bn - with £2.3bn being spent on administration, including £1.3bn to private solicitors to process claims. The Commons public accounts committee report condemns the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform for the handling of the scheme...Some solicitors overcharged claimants or charged them fees when the government was paying the bills. The department is seeking the return of more than £80m from solicitors, while a number of big law firms are now reimbursing claimants.

Guardian

04 Mar

Irish solicitors wooing wealthy Britons on tax

Several Irish legal firms are in talks with advisors to high-net worth individuals living in Britain about moving to Ireland. The move follows plans to introduce stricter rules governing foreign residents in Britain - so-called ‘non-doms’ - who have benefited from favourable tax treatment there. A partner in one of Ireland’s leading law firms said the proposal by the British government to charge non-domiciled residents £30,000 per year was not enough to drive large numbers away.

Sunday Business Post (IE)

03 Mar

Lawyers: the OFT flexes its muscles, but will it work?

The OFT’s plans to offer up to £100,000 for information leading to the break-up of cartels is an aggressive move from a regulator on a bit of a roll. Recent successes including the £121.5 million fine against British Airways for price-fixing on fuel surcharges with Virgin Atlantic (which was given immunity), fines totalling £120 million in the supermarkets price-fixing probe and the arrest of three British executives involved in a marine hoses cartel have given the OFT a new wave of confidence. John Colahan, a competition partner at Latham & Watkins in London, said today’s move is part of the watchdog’s ”generally more activist approach that has seen it try to establish itself further into people’s consciousness as a serious and effective regulator”.

Times Online

01 Mar