How bogus solicitors robbed us of £735k
By Sebastian O'Kelly
24 August 2010
Three months after paying for the property, Nick Christofi, his partner Sharon Griffin and their two sons should be settled into a large Tudor-style four-bedroom house in the desirable North London suburb of Hadley Wood.
Instead, the family's life has been shattered after Nick discovered that he had been a victim of brazen conmen, who sold him the house while it was in the process of being repossessed, and then helped themselves to the full £735,000 asking price after setting up an all-too-plausible bogus solicitors' practice to receive the funds. The family's own lawyer, Pamela Murphy of Schubert Murphy, didn't realise it was a scam and is now disputing his claim that she acted negligently.
The Law Society also denies responsibility, although it carried details of the bogus Acorn Solicitors, based in Rotherham, on its website - and kept them there for six weeks even after the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) was informed that the practice was a criminal sham and police were investigating.
'This practice has been abandoned and the persons behind it are being sought,' say South Yorkshire Police, who are investigating the fraud.
The way the family were robbed of their money leaves open questions about the effectiveness of the legal profession to protect the public against criminality in its ranks.
'As soon as I realised what had happened, I informed the Law Society and the SRA,' says Nick, 40. 'Everybody wanted to wash their hands of this, until the police took what I was saying seriously.'
Several other property transactions involving Acorn Solicitors had been reported to the police as suspected fraud. The firm is also being investigated for pocketing several million pounds from frauds in construction contracts connected with the 2012 London Olympics.
Sharon, 42, and Nick, a small-scale property developer, were wanting to move from Cockfosters in North London to the more salubrious Hadley Wood nearby and were contacted in April by estate agents Sean Heaney about a house where the seller was after a quick sale.
The property was priced at £735,000, although the seller had paid £875,000 for it in December 2007. As the property was such a bargain, the agents were on only a one per cent commission to clinch a deal.
'Nothing decent usually comes up in Hadley Wood for less than £1million so I jumped at the chance to buy it,' says Nick, who was shown round the property by a man who said he was a friend of the seller.
With no time to sell their existing house, Nick borrowed £400,000 from his brother and another £200,000 from his brother-in-law in order to clinch the deal, and instructed Pamela Murphy, whom his family had used in the past.
Through the estate agent, Christofi's lawyers were put in contact with Acorn Solicitors, acting for the seller.
Acorn then repeatedly tried to speed up the process, which was completed in three weeks on May 21. Rather than move in immediately, Nick and Sharon had builders in to carry out refurbishment. But on June 9, they were astonished to receive a notice of eviction.
The house had been repossessed by Lloyds TSB, to whom the owner owed £843,000, with a repossession order granted last December. Indeed, the bank had sent in bailiffs in April, who found that the property was let to a family with young children.
'It is devastating what has happened to us,' says Nick. 'Both Sharon and I have been ill with stress because of this, not least because I owe all this money to my family. All we were trying to do was buy a house with a large enough garden for our children to kick around a football.'
The couple, whose sons Lewis and Harry are aged ten and eight, have managed to persuade Lloyds TSB to delay the eviction until October. Meanwhile, he is suing his solicitor Schubert Murphy for negligence. He says they failed to spot what he claims were ten 'tell-tale signs that Acorn Solicitors were bogus'. The firm denies negligence.
Most of these are minor inconsistencies, such as differing email and postal addresses and a website that never worked.
More seriously, although Acorn Solicitors were supposedly based in Rotherham, their client account was at a bank in Wembley, a highly unusual arrangement.
Schubert Murphy were unaware that solicitors in other property transactions had pulled out of deals with Acorn Solicitors and reported them to the police.
It is an additional confusion that there is a legitimate Acorn Solicitors based in Taunton in Somerset, and there is a retired solicitor called John Dobbs, the same name used as the registered solicitor of the fraudulent outfit. Neither are in any way connected with the bogus firm that was in Rotherham.
Nick and Sharon are pursuing the case with swanky City outfit Holman Fenwick Willan, who have taken it on as a 'no-win, no-fee' case.
'But unless they get a settlement before October, the bank will take back the house,' says Nick.
What will worry other home buyers is the prevalence of fraudsters establishing bogus solicitors, or cloning an existing one's identity and carrying out the conveyancing work with plausible competence.
Last week, the Law Society Gazette reported another case of identity theft when legitimate Bolton firm SK Solicitors were cloned by fraudsters in conveyancing transactions. Many may feel the response of the SRA and the Law Society to the Christofi case was especially feeble.
'I thought it was disgraceful that it took six weeks for the Law Society to remove the fraudsters from its website,' says Nick.
'Who else used that practice in the meantime?' In an email telling Nick that he was not eligible for compensation - because he had been robbed by a criminal rather than a crooked member of the legal profession - the SRA inadvertently leaked a series of emails between its bureaucrats.
'Perhaps we should advise "clients" that they appear to have been victims of an elaborate fraud and should make a complaint to the police,' wrote Tony Coletta on July 9. The public may be mystified why the SRA was not warning them about a practice that was already under police investigation.
The Law Society says it regrets that its website listing registered solicitors included a fraudulent practice, but pointed out that the data comes from the SRA.
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