Local solicitor struck off

A Macclesfield solicitor currently serving a three-year jail sentence for eight counts of fraud and one of false accounting has been struck off.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s disciplinary tribunal ordered that Steven Ronald Shepherd, 56, who was partner in Stepherd Evans, of Mulberry House, Little Street, be removed from the Roll of solicitors.

Shepherd was convicted and sentenced at Manchester Crown Court on April 27 2015 and ordered to pay compensation of £145,000 and £700 prosecution costs.

His offences involved the withdrawal of money from the client account of the firm in which he was a partner between April 2009 and July 2011.

Shepherd concealed the withdrawals by falsifying client ledgers and other documents on client files. In one instance, he withdrew £100,000 of damages due to his client, having misled the client as to the amount rewarded in compensation.

Some of the £145,000 he took was to pay Shepherd’s personal tax liability and some was taken in cheques made out to himself. Some £50,000 of the money withdrawn from the client account remained in the firm’s office account.

The trial judge’s comments were submitted to the tribunal. He told Shepherd: “You defrauded a significant amount of money.

“The evidence in front of me suggests you did so, it seems, entirely for your own benefit to, in turns, fund your gambling having.

“As you well know, Mr shepherd, yours were the acts of a greedy and selfish man, taking money from vulnerable people to stave off your creditors and, in particular it seems from the evidence, Her Majecty’s Revenue and Customs.

“This offending amounts to a naked and blatant abuse of the trust imposed upon you as a solicitor.”

The tribunal noted in a letter, Shepherd, in dealing with the issue of whether attendance at the hearing would be possible by video-link or telephone, he said: “What’s the point?”

He went on to say: “I may as well just admit all the accusations, whatever they are (as I don’t have any papers here). I pleaded guilty, paid all the money back and am in prison on a three-year sentence. There is nothing else anyone ca do to me.

“All the process has demonstrated to me is my wish to cut links with a profession that is no longer honourable or respected.”