Southwark Crown Court: Callaghan was sentenced earlier this month
A struck-off solicitor and former deputy district judge who defrauded his clients at two law firms of nearly £400,000 over the course of 17 years has been jailed for four years.
Sean Callaghan, 64, of Rayleigh, Essex, “repeatedly edited payment details to divert funds from client accounts to accounts he controlled, inflated client fees for his own personal gain, and falsified invoices”, according to Essex Police.
He worked at Essex firm BMTK Solicitors from 1996 – with his offending starting in 2003 – and was a partner for 15 years before moving to Palmers in 2019 as head of commercial property. His fraudulent activities continued before false invoices were discovered.
Both firms made reports to the police and the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
The firms involved also launched their own investigations and began civil recovery proceedings. He was struck off in 2022 [1]; at the time, he had made an interim payment of £105,000 to BTMK.
Essex Police said more than a dozen individuals and businesses were either defrauded or used by Mr Callaghan to move and conceal payments made into his accounts and estimated the total loss was a little over £396,000 – significantly more than the figures seen by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
He pleaded guilty to 17 charges of fraud and two charges of theft at Southwark Crown Court in July and was sentenced earlier this month.
In one case in 2008, while handling the case of a deceased woman’s estate, Mr Callaghan altered the sums the beneficiaries were supposed to receive and concealed more than £20,000 of her estate before paying that sum into a business account of his just days after paying her surviving family.
In some cases, the money he extracted from these accounts was used to fund home renovations, the purchases of a classic car and replacement parts, and the purchases of property abroad.
Detective Thomas Blackmore said: “Callaghan was in a position of trust over his clients, yet he operated a complex web of deception to exploit their funds. He did this over and over, with total disregard for those he was stealing from.”
A spokesperson for BMTK said: “When we were made aware of concerns, we took immediate action and we have set aside funds which we have identified should be reimbursed to affected clients and we are working at pace to locate those clients and complete their full reimbursement.
“These clients comprise only a very small number of the firm’s clients overall, and a very small proportion of the firm’s business.”
A spokesperson for Palmers added: “He came to us cloaked in the reputation of being a trusted advisor to his loyal client base and in the spotlight of what was, on the face of it, a lengthy and distinguished career…
“Notwithstanding the level of sophistication, investment of time and effort and the planning involved in his offending, our robust systems and our excellent team enabled us to identify that something was not right, following which we immediately and thoroughly investigated.”