Thursday 31 December 2009

Old Established English Firm Rocked By Allegations Of Criminal Behaviour

A Stockport-based law firm has been closed down and five solicitors have had their licences suspended amid claims of dishonesty.

Wolstenholmes, which opened in 1818, is being investigated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
It's terribly sad to see an old, established English name brought low...
The Legal Complaints Commission (LCC) is dealing with 116 complaints from customers who say they have lost money.
How could a reputable firm like this have been involved in dishonest dealings?
One of those suspended, Imran Hussain, apologised for the current situation and for distress caused to customers.

Helen Murgatroyd, Bobby Shabbir, Bilal Khawaja and Nasser Ilyas also had their licences suspended just before Christmas.
Ah. Never mind.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please could you clarify what you are trying to say in this post? Are you saying that people from the Indian subcontinent (the names you have chosen to make bold are common in this area) are more likely to be dishonest? Or that is is less surprising that people from this region are dishonest?

Also, please could you explain in what way this is multicultural madness? A firm of solicitors has been involved in dishonest dealings, and it appears that most of the people involved were of Asian descent. I am struggling to see the link with multiculturalism.

May 2010 bring you wisdom.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Tee hee.

If I could have been bothered, i would have done the same exercise with all the cases of fraud at local elections. Whether the party concerned was Labour, Lib Dem or Tory, the persons concerned were all of Asian descent.

Oldrightie said...

It's a cultural thing, you know, like the caste system.

Quiet_Man said...

You may say that but I couldn't possibly comment ;-)

Oh go on then "Hang the lawyers!"

Anonymous said...

Yes, spare a thought for the poor hapless sods who had handed over, or had handed over by their banks or whatever money to this long established enterprise as part of a house purchase and are now sitting back wondering whether they will ever see that money again, never mind have already seen a proposed property purchase go west and are meantimes having to rent or impose themselves on relatives ...

Solicitors have to practically submit a signed "I am up to no good and am embezzling client funds" confession to the Law Society before it suspends them.

Edwin Greenwood said...

Regrettably, Anon, anecdotal evidence does appear to imply disproportionate levels of crime among the BME "communities". Blacks (particularly West Indians and Somalis) are noted for violence and robbery. West Africans are more into petty fraud and forgery, Indians for professional misconduct, particularly fraud, while Pakistanis are big in electoral fraud.

Or so it would seem. I recommend a browse of the Court News website. Note and enumerate the surnames and compare those numbers to the relative populations of the respective "communities" in the UK.

Anonymous said...

and Asian males in the medical profession tend to be the majority in professional misconduct cases. "please take your clothes off and lie on the couch" "But I've only come to see you for a sore throat" "Goodness, gracious me"!

Anonymous said...

The Finnish police have released the name of the 'Finn' who ran amok in a shopping mall, Ibrahim Shkapolli.

It is not paranoia, it is not racism, it is reality.


Richard

Furor Teutonicus said...

A few years ago I thought I was "a voice in the wilderness".

I HATE to say "I told you so".

So WHEN is someone going to wake up and (legaly) do something about it?

And, as an afterthought, is it me again, or is it always the "global warming fans" that also believe these "Race/culture to crime statistics are lying?

Well They DO have form for turning a blind eye to startlingly clear evidence.

JuliaM said...

"Please could you clarify what you are trying to say in this post?"

Why, I'm amused by the Beeb reports classification of this as an 'old, established English legal firm, steeped in history'.

Aren't you?

"If I could have been bothered, i would have done the same exercise with all the cases of fraud at local elections..."

That would be a real Labour of Hercules! ;)

"Yes, spare a thought for the poor hapless sods who had handed over, or had handed over by their banks or whatever money to this long established enterprise as part of a house purchase..."

Hopefully, plenty of people Googled it first. There's a lot of information out there, especially on moneysavingexpert.

JuliaM said...

"Regrettably, Anon, anecdotal evidence does appear to imply disproportionate levels of crime among the BME "communities"."

We must be blind to this though. Multiculturalism demands it.

"..."please take your clothes off and lie on the couch" "But I've only come to see you for a sore throat" "Goodness, gracious me"!..."

ROFL!

"The Finnish police have released the name of the 'Finn' who ran amok in a shopping mall, Ibrahim Shkapolli."

A convert, I wonder?

JuliaM said...

"And, as an afterthought, is it me again, or is it always the "global warming fans" that also believe these "Race/culture to crime statistics are lying?"

It does seem to be the same group of people every time, doesn't it?

Mark said...

'A convert, I wonder?'

The name Shkapolli is almost certainly Albanian- although he may have pretended to be a 'Kosovan' to get residency in Finland (rather like our own 'Shaqa Shatri', who the UK courts are refusing to extradite back to his homeland- aren't they wonderful ?)

Hippy Dippy said...

Ibrahim Shkapolli.

Hey, man, let's not all, like, rush to judgement.

James Higham said...

Nuff said. :)

North Northwester said...

Anonymous said...

Please could you clarify what you are trying to say in this post? .

If you tell kids every week of their lives that they are nothing without God and and that everyone who doesn't follow Him in the One True Way is damned...and you neglect to emphasise the ideas of human forgiveness and mercy [as distinct from Divine forgiveness and mercy], and you don't give any examples of Divine forgiveness or mercy, then you're not going to end up with the touchy-feely idea that we ought to be good/honest/forthright with strangers.

You get something else.

Words matter.
The Koran is full of words [often the word 'fight' is mentioned.] Go figure.

Happy New Year everyone, by the way.

Anonymous said...

Well done Julia. At first I shared the shock of Mr. Anonymous, but then came to my senses after considered the thread comments. My initial reaction must have been knee jerk as a result of all the years of conditioning, so I guess it must be time to put my name down for reprogramming.

Anonymous said...

Boom tiddy boom tiddy boom tiddy boom well Goodness Gracious me!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKMy15O1tCw&feature=related

Happy New Year

Bystander said...

You cannot lose money if you instruct a proper solicitor, since the Law Society will immediately pick up the bill, for which, in theory, every solicitor is liable to pay a share. In practice, there's a fund.
There are indeed some dodgy Indian lawyers, as well as some Jewish English and whoever.

banned said...

For a view of similarly crooked folk in, primarily, local politics

http://liarsbuggersandthieves.blogspot.com/

You would have to have been blind not to have noticed a pattern in the names of those convicted of electoral postal fraud over the past few years. I think that the DT and DM must take a secret delight in publishing them since it's just news innit?

KenS said...

You cannot lose money if you instruct a proper solicitor

Bystander, are you saying these were not proper solicitors in this case or are you saying no-one has lost money in this case?

JuliaM said...

"For a view of similarly crooked folk in, primarily, local politics

http://liarsbuggersandthieves.blogspot.com/"


Ooh, cheers for that! Very useful site.

Anonymous said...

Bystander,
"You cannot lose money if you instruct a proper solicitor, since the Law Society will immediately pick up the bill...."

So that's alright then, nobody lost anything.

Hang on a minute though, where do the law society get the money for their compensation fund? From other solicitors.

And where do the other solicitors get the money to give to the law society? From you and me, their clients.

So it looks to me that we get screwed whether the thieving cheeting solicitors get caught or get away with it.

Anonymous said...

i understand that wolstenholmes asked for a deposit up front for work not yet carried out and paid sales staff handsome commission (ote £40k pa)to bring in the business that they could clearly never hope to service.

not long ago they were being heralded as the firm bucking the recession...on the back of false promise.

JuliaM said...

"not long ago they were being heralded as the firm bucking the recession...on the back of false promise."

That seems to be the basis for all our 'successful' firms lately!