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<\/p>\nA solicitor who ran up client account shortages of more than \u00a31m through a series of unauthorised payments \u2013 including one to cover his own tax bill \u2013 has been struck off.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found that probate specialist Andrew Brian Alexander Cooper, admitted in 2007, had abused his position of power and authority over three years with his \u2018deliberate and calculated\u2019 misconduct.<\/p>\n
The tribunal heard that Cooper had overseen 83 transfers in total out of the client account without consent, seven of which were made to HM Revenue & Customs in respect of his own liabilities. Payments to cover his personal tax bill came to almost \u00a377,000.\u00a0Several of the other payments to third parties personally benefitted him.<\/p>\n
In total, investigators from the Solicitors Regulation Authority found a cash shortage of almost \u00a31.2m arising from improper payments being made from the client account of his firm, Streathers Solicitors, based in Baker Street, London.<\/p>\n
Cooper was also found to have inserted a signature onto a change-of-address letter to HMRC on behalf of an executor client without their knowledge or consent, when he was acting in the administration of an estate. The client discovered the deception when she later contacted HMRC and was unable to pass security checks.<\/p>\n
The executor emailed Cooper to say it was \u2018alarming\u2019 that her signature appeared to have been fraudulently copied, after the solicitor denied sending the HMRC letter. The dishonesty was revealed when the firm found a deleted email on Cooper\u2019s computer system.<\/p>\n
In September 2022, Cooper was summoned to a meeting at which he was presented with evidence of \u00a0irregular transfers or payments. He stood up, stated \u2018I am absolutely fucked\u2019 and left the building. He was not represented at the tribunal and did not engage with the disciplinary proceedings.<\/p>\n
Cooper was struck off and ordered to pay \u00a329,451 costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A solicitor who ran up client account shortages of more than \u00a31m through a series of unauthorised payments…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[114,268,85,46,266,267],"class_list":{"0":"post-275988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}