Mridan » Travelogue Entry » Shame of lawyer who stole cash from clients to help pay her debts

Shame of lawyer who stole cash from clients to help pay her debts

A DISGRACED solicitor who siphoned off more than 1,300 of clients’ fees said yesterday she had committed the crime to pay council tax debts and that her actions now made her feel “sick”.

Zosia Fraser, 29, who had excellent prospects before her dishonesty came to light, said she was struggling with debts in excess of 15,000 when she began taking money paid by clients. “It’s no wonder that people love to hate lawyers,” she said.

Fraser pleaded guilty last month to embezzling 1,315 from the Dundee-based law firm Muir, Myles, Laverty. She will be sentenced next week and faces being barred from practising by the Law Society of Scotland.

She told The Scotsman she had been “pilloried” since the crime came to light. “I’m not looking to excuse what I’ve done, but I feel everything that has been said about me is very one-sided. I just want to put my side across, not say ‘poor me’,” she said.

Fraser had been suffering from depression at the time and was deeply in debt to Dundee City Council as a result of unpaid council tax. She said she had debts of between 15,000 and 20,000 - nearly half of which was owed to the council - when she began taking the money.

“I’m not saying I stole money from clients because I had a council tax debt. I’m a fairly rational person. Would I take anything from people now? No. I can’t say there’s a link between suffering from depression and committing a criminal act, but I wasn’t thinking rationally at the time,” she said.

Fraser said her clients had paid money up front for representation - something she says “all solicitors do”. It was from these advance payments that she began taking money.

“I would take maybe 50 to 100 a time,” she said. “It was an opportune thing rather than something that was planned.”

Fraser left Muir, Myles, Laverty in September 2004 to work for Joe Myles, a former partner of the firm. She was exposed two months later when a former colleague told her they had noticed “irregularities” in the accounts, and suggested it was time to “come clean”.

Her old employer reported the matter to the Law Society of Scotland before referring it to Tayside Police.

Fraser, a domestic law specialist, originally from Inverness, graduated from Dundee University with a diploma in legal practice in 1999.

She worked for the Dundee law firm RSB Macdonald as a trainee but was sacked for gross misconduct after forging a doctor’s letter stating she had suffered a miscarriage and would have to take time off work.

Fraser said: “I bitterly regret my actions. I feel so terrible about it. I know these were honest, hard-working people who I took money from. That makes me sick. I’m advised I’ll be struck off. I’ll be fine, but the legal profession’s reputation is already in the gutter and I haven’t done anything to help that.

“I wish I’d asked people for help instead of doing what I did. It was despicable.” SOLICITORS WHO FELL FROM GRACE

IN 2004, another promising Dundee-based solicitor was convicted and fined after admitting a 5,187 child care tax fraud.

Louise Hay pretended to be a single parent and received the Working Family Tax Credit by signing Inland Revenue forms with the name Hazel Mears. She was fined 750 at Dundee Sheriff Court.

Hay was fired by the Edinburgh law firm Simpson & Marwick and later lost her unfair dismissal case.

However, the Scottish Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal ruled that Hay, from Broughty Ferry, could remain a lawyer because there was little chance of her reoffending.

In April, a solicitor who was jailed for 32 months for smuggling drugs into a prison was freed after serving just a year.

Angela Baillie, 33, a former defence lawyer nicknamed Ally McDeal by the tabloids, was jailed after pleading guilty to handing a cigarette packet containing heroin and diazepam worth 1,600 to a man awaiting trial in Glasgow’s Barlinnie prison.

Baillie, who has a daughter aged 16, claimed she smuggled the drugs into the jail under extreme duress.

It is understood she was tagged as part of the home detention curfew scheme which allows prisoners to be released before serving half their sentence.

The pressure group dedicated to exposing corrupt lawyers, Scotland Against Crooked Lawyers (SACL), fought in last month’s elections to the Scottish Parliament.

SACL has featured “rogues’ galleries” of lawyers alleged to be corrupt.