A legal executive has been jailed for three years after admitting stealing £205,000 from her own law firm.
In happier days, Ruth Turner was a legal executive at Kundert Solicitors of Coventry. She rose through the secretarial ranks to become a conveyancing executive. But it started to go wrong in February 2009 when she began stealing money from conveyancing completions, taking up to £21k at a time.
As usual for a law firm, it took two and a half years for anyone to notice what was going on. In the meantime she had blown the cash on home improvements and in compulsive attempts to buy friends, taking hangers-on out for meals, shopping trips, and to Neil Diamond concerts. That's one way to make friends.
In an unusual twist to the story, Turner told police that she had actually stolen over £400k, although a lack of evidence meant that she was only charged in relation to £205k. It seems the accounts system at Kundert Solicitors could do with a little tightening up.
Turner was sentenced to three years inside earlier this week. That seems like a long time, especially when you consider it's the same sentence that was handed out to Christopher "£1.3 million" Grierson. Judge Richard Griffith-Jones at Coventry Crown Court said that the thefts, done "out of greed", marked a "serious abuse of trust" which, given the economic conditions at the time, meant that others' jobs had been at risk.
Turner joins the ranks of the Dodgy Solicitors. Make sure you send in your story of legal chicanery to the usual place.
Tip Off ROF
In happier days, Ruth Turner was a legal executive at Kundert Solicitors of Coventry. She rose through the secretarial ranks to become a conveyancing executive. But it started to go wrong in February 2009 when she began stealing money from conveyancing completions, taking up to £21k at a time.
As usual for a law firm, it took two and a half years for anyone to notice what was going on. In the meantime she had blown the cash on home improvements and in compulsive attempts to buy friends, taking hangers-on out for meals, shopping trips, and to Neil Diamond concerts. That's one way to make friends.
Ruth on her way to a Neil Diamond gig |
In an unusual twist to the story, Turner told police that she had actually stolen over £400k, although a lack of evidence meant that she was only charged in relation to £205k. It seems the accounts system at Kundert Solicitors could do with a little tightening up.
Turner was sentenced to three years inside earlier this week. That seems like a long time, especially when you consider it's the same sentence that was handed out to Christopher "£1.3 million" Grierson. Judge Richard Griffith-Jones at Coventry Crown Court said that the thefts, done "out of greed", marked a "serious abuse of trust" which, given the economic conditions at the time, meant that others' jobs had been at risk.
Turner joins the ranks of the Dodgy Solicitors. Make sure you send in your story of legal chicanery to the usual place.
Name |
Jurisdiction |
Crime |
Sentence |
---|---|---|---|
Matthew Kluger, ex Skadden |
USA | Insider trading |
12 years |
Douglas Arntsen, ex Crowell & Moring |
USA |
Theft of $10.7 million |
4-12 years |
Martin Weisberg, ex Bakers |
USA | $3m money laundering, securities fraud |
8 years expected |
Simon Morgan, ex Milners | England | Theft of £1.4 million | 7 years |
Kevin Steele, ex Mishcon |
England | £18.4m conspiracy |
5 years 6 months |
Louise Martini, ex Williamson & Soden |
England | Theft of £1.7m |
5 years |
Hugh Wotherspoon, ex Laddas & Parry |
England | Groping on a night bus |
5 years on the Register |
Ajayi Seun, ex Doves Solicitors |
England | Fraud involving £5.5m |
4 years |
David O'Shea, ex O'Donovan |
Ireland | Theft of €779,000 |
4 years |
Kenneth Hunt, ex Hunt Kidd |
England | Theft of £1m |
4 years |
Ruth Turner, ex Kundert Solicitors |
England |
Theft of £205,000 |
3 years |
Christopher Grierson, ex Lovells |
England | Theft of £1.3m |
3 years |
Barbara Gayton, ex Hunt Kidd |
England | Theft of £1m |
2 years |
Elena Quinlivan |
England | £1.3 million mortgage fraud |
2 years |
Andy Hodges, ex Fraser Brown/Challinors |
England | Theft of £70,000 |
18 months |
Emma Rowsell, ex CC |
England | Theft of £63,000 |
18 months |
Richard Simkin, ex Fulbright |
England | Theft of £100,000 |
16 months |
Judie Groom, ex CC |
England | Theft of £23,000 |
15 months |
Leonard Sawyer |
USA | Lewd acts |
180 days expected |
Partner, Hogan Lovells |
Dubai | Running a red light |
20 days |
Pissed trainee, Freshfields |
Dubai | Being pissed |
2 days |
Comments
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see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Stuart_Dreier
Also is an excellent movie about his crimes, 'Unraveled'.
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I hope that you are not implying that the Legal Executive in question here wasnt a lawyer?
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I know she has done wrong and I neither excuse nor condone it. However I do think this gleeful and nasty coverage is unfair and demeaning. We don't know the full story and we are supposed to be lawyers. Kicking someone like this when they are down is undignified. There is just something not right about it.
Also it has no relevance or bearing on what I understand to be the main purpose of this site, which is to inform City associates about goings-on in the City legal environment in a fun and irreverent way. That's why I come here. By all means cover these stories where they are relevant to that milieu, but I do not wish to laugh and poke fun at disturbed and damaged individuals. It's just mean.
I think this is a terrific site and there is a lot of good humour here. 'Glamorous Solicitor', for example, is good-natured and without malice. The same cannot be said for this nasty section of the site. Please show some ethics, fairness and dignity in your treatment of others - much crime occurs due to the circumstances a person finds themselves in, and anyone can suffer a misfortune. That is not in any way to excuse it, but this lady - and the others you feature - have been punished and ruined. It is not your business to pile on more abuse and humiliation with it.
Thank you.
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In contrast, are the glamerous solicitors, who have (probably!) not done anything wrong, more deserving of our ridicule? There is a little bit of a double standard in the above comment.
It is undignified, I agree with that, but these people do undermine the profession, give us all a bad name, and perhaps holding them up so their peers can have a jolly good laugh at their expense is quite a fitting consequence for them.
I enjoy these stories, but appreciate that its not very nice of me to do so.
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I doubt you care very much about the good name of the profession, or you would protest. How does it help the profession? More importantly, how does it assist an understanding of the pressures in the profession if the 'normal' reaction is to laugh at this type of conduct?
The above arguments put in defence of Roll on Friday are incoherent. This is because there is no proper justification for these articles. They are simply examples of childish, immature humour.
Roll on Friday professes to care for people who work in the profession - that is, unless it can gain a cheap laugh at someone else's expense.
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That you cannot spell 'glamorous' correctly perhaps provides a clue as to why you failed to comprehend the point.
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Sounds like the person(s) making this point feel uncomfortable about lawyers being held accountable. (Perhaps they don't like to be accountable themselves either?)
Perhaps they prefer no one mention what lawyers get up to? Or maybe they have some deluded(and dangerous) view that it's better not to make public information about criminal behaviour of people in positions of power? (Just see what holding back on Jimmy Savile resulted in if you're wondering if self-censorship is a good idea).
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And to be fair, it also criticises her firm (for taking 2 years to catch up with her - talk about systemic failure), AND wonders about her pretty harsh sentence when compared to others who stole FAR more money (e.g. Grierson).
As to her mental state, I dare say almost every single member of the table above attempted similar mitigation (e.g. Grierson). For some (e.g. Grierson), it clearly worked. But perhaps not in the case of Ms Turner.
More power to your writers' elbows.
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Keep these Dodgy Solicitor stories coming Rof. People can always choose not to click on them, or to climb down off of their soap boxes before they do.
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The greed score and the top trumps theme might perhaps offend the people being reported, their friends, colleagues and families, but I do not understand why this should otherwise upset people. Free speech sometimes comes at the the cost of upsetting a minority.
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Noun: A person who practices or studies law