A solicitor has been struck off for multiple unauthorised uses of client account funds and ‘deceptive conduct’ toward HMRC, following a hearing at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT).
Andrew Cooper was a partner in the probate department at Streathers Solicitors LLP at the time of the misconduct, which came to light in September 2022 when a client complaint resulted in the firm referring the matter to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
In early 2023, a forensic investigation officer identified that between 16 August 2019 and 20 September 2022, Mr Cooper made numerous unauthorised payments from client ledgers. Payments included seven transfers totalling £76,652.82 to HMRC for his personal tax liabilities, 42 improper payments to clients and third parties that together produced a net client‑account shortage in excess of £1 million, and 34 transfers from client to office account without client authority.
Within that period, on 27th June 2022, Cooper sent an HMRC letter on an estate file substituting his home address for his client’s and applied her electronic signature. When the client failed HMRC security checks and queried the letter, Mr Cooper wrote to HMRC denying that such a letter had been sent by the firm and deleted the copy from his computer.
An internal review conducted in September found the deleted letter on Cooper’s hard drive, after which he admitted creating and sending it. He apologised, explaining he believed he could “manage the matter more effectively” by receiving HMRC correspondence at home.
At a second internal meeting just two days later, the irregular payments were put to Mr Cooper at which point the tribunal notes he stated “I am absolutely f*****d”, left the meeting and did not return.
Mr Cooper did not attend the subsequent SDT hearing or submit any evidence for mitigation. He was found in breach of multiple SRA Principles 2011 (Principles 2, 6, 10), Solicitors Accounts Rules 2011 (r.20.1(f)), SRA Principles 2019 (Principles 2, 4, 5) and SRA Accounts Rules 2019 (r.5.1). The SDT held the conduct was dishonest and that striking off was the only proportionate sanction given deliberate, repeated misuse of client funds and deceptive conduct toward HMRC.
Mr Cooper was struck from the roll ordered to pay costs of £29,451.29.
2 responses
I am interested to hear that this process can reap rewards and satisfaction when it comes to solicitors’ misconduct.
I am due to give evidence in an unethical conduct case in which a solicitor allowed a third party to initiate a TR1 property transfer for an elderly lady in order to make herself a joint tenant, with right of survivorship. However the solicitor is claiming ill health in what seems like an attempt to get out of engaging with the process.
The events leading up to this are as follows:
The elderly lady in question is/was sole owner of her house. She has no family of her own, being unmarried, childless and with no known living relatives. She told me one day in April 2022 that a solicitor had been to see her (I am her neighbour and long-term friend and later on I became her LPA) and that she did not know what the result would be of the document that he and the other party (who was known to her) had put before her to sign. Her signature was secured on the very first meeting and the other party was in the room throughout. I suggested that she call the solicitor to ask him to visit her to explain more, which she did, but he refused saying he would only speak to her if the other party was there. She wrote letters and called him again asking him to withdraw the agreement at the Land Registry. Again he refused.
Eventually she found another solicitor who also put it to him that he should honour her request to withdraw the TR1 but he continued to refuse. And so it went to litigation. A First Tier Tribunal date was set to hear the case, but sadly she passed away while a process was on foot to make me her litigation friend in the proceedings. Her executors then renounced, but despite my efforts to keep the case going, there was no one could take it forward, so the property eventually, after two years of legal wrangling, passed to the other party. This meant that the lady’s will was unable to be fulfilled, with her beneficiaries (and creditors) left unpaid. The original solicitor was in the meantime reported to the SRA, but despite their best efforts to bring him to a hearing, he has stalled and stalled and now he claims ill-health. So now the process seems to be on hold indefinitely.
Luckily, while the owner was still alive her new solicitors had suggested that she make a unilateral severance (without prejudice) so that the property became Tenants in Common. This has now been sent to the Land Registry with hopes that it will shortly be enacted, with the hope that there might be funds available to pay off her substantial care-home debt and perhaps her beneficiaries too. However the long and tiring fight for justice in this case has been most dispiriting. The law has not able to protect ann elderly and vulnerable lady from a financial predator and it made the last years of her life full of anxiety and worry.
I would really like to know therefore how long the SRA will wait before they compel the solicitor in question to come forward to the and face the charges. Whether or not he severance will be effective, it is his action, or lack of it, that started the whole business. After all, if he had listened to his ‘client’s’ pleas for him to revoke the TR1 property transfer none of this would have happened. And years of heartache and expensive legal fees (the very costs which caused her to slide into debt) could have been avoided.
If nothing else, at the very least her story should be told.
That’s a shocking tale you tell Jane. Definitely a financial predator, as you say, with a complicit solicitor who no doubt got paid off somehow. Please do come back and post updates as and when you get them.