CV: Solicitor did not undertake background checks
A veteran solicitor who was “duped” when recruiting a disbarred barrister with a fraud conviction – having not checked his background – has been suspended for 18 months.
Stefanie Anne O’Bryen, who qualified in 1982 and was the sole owner of Watlington Solicitors in Oxfordshire, also hired a struck-off solicitor, who was working under a false name.
She said the events led to the destruction of her “cherished” practice.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) said Ms O’Bryen failed to carry out “standard recruitment checks” designed to uncover lawyers who were disqualified, unqualified or convicted criminals, which led her to recruit staff “a reputable law firm would seek to avoid”.
In a statement of agreed facts and proposed sanction, approved by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT), the SRA said that in her first interview with a man calling himself ‘Asad Sahi’ in 2022, Ms O’Bryen said she did not ask to see his passport, nor did she do any background checks.
The SRA later identified that ‘Asad Sahi’ was in fact a disbarred barrister with a criminal conviction for conspiracy to commit fraud called Yawar Ali Shah.
A registered foreign lawyer, he worked as a consultant at Watlingtons from June 2022 to July 2023, receiving 80% of the fees he billed on client matters, with the firm receiving 20%. In the first half of 2023, Mr Shah was paid over £54,000.
Ms O’Bryen allowed him to supervise the work of staff he brought with him – together known as the ‘London Group’ – conducting reserved legal services.
The solicitor argued that that it was “difficult to do due diligence” and she had checked the Law Society’s list; she was not sure what other due diligence she would have been able to do. She had relied on conversations with the ‘London Group’ and did not do checks on any of the people in it.
One of them was an ‘Edward Elkins’, who the SRA established was in fact Peter Hastings, struck off as a solicitor in 2003.
She accepted in the agreed outcome that she should have conducted better due diligence.
Mr Shah worked either from home or from an office in central London. He used an email address outside of the firm’s systems, which meant Ms O’Bryen could not supervise his communications with clients; when she asked for access, it was refused.
She admitted having no understanding of what client files he was working on.
The Metropolitan Police contacted the SRA in April 2024 to explain that Newham Council had recovered bags of documents that were fly-tipped into public bins and containing 17 client files from Watlington Solicitors. Ms O’Bryen said she did not know how this had happened.
Among the files were evidence of the poor conduct of cases by Mr Shah and his team, such as not undertaking proper anti-money laundering (AML) checks and failing to register a lender’s charge on a property.
The SRA said that, due to her inadequate supervision of Asad Sahi, Edward Elkins and the London Group, “their conduct on client matters led to a poor standard of service and ultimately the demise of [Ms O’Bryen’s firm]”.
Ms O’Bryen admitted to multiple other breaches: failing to keep and maintain accurate accounting records and causing separate client account shortages of around £6,000 and £3,500.
Further, from June 2017 to October 2022, she failed to have in place a firm-wide risk assessment (FWRA) or anti-money laundering policies or procedures as required. She made a “false and misleading” declaration to the SRA in 2019 that she had a fully compliant FWRA.
In non-agreed mitigation, Ms O’Bryen accepted that she had been “duped” and should have taken further steps in ensuring the identity of ‘Sahi’ and ‘Elkins’.
But she pointed out that they produced false ID documents when asked, and were vouched for by a practising accountant and several other solicitors.
She said Asad Sahi “carefully manipulated and groomed her into believing that he was trustworthy and honest, and a competent lawyer”.
The use of modern communications “makes it easy for fraudsters to carry out work purporting to be on behalf of a solicitor’s firm, because email addresses and headed paper can be produced so easily”, she added, while accepting she failed to supervise the recruits properly.
Ms O’Bryen said she had suffered “physically, mentally and financially… as a result of the destruction of her cherished sole practice by ‘Asad Sahi’ and his associates.
“She lost the chance to hand over her practice to another local firm, so had to pay a run-off cover premium to close down. She has incurred fees in relation to two negligence claims, unbilled disbursements and other matters, as well as her own legal fees.” The total to date was just over £100,000.
The SRA had informed her that ‘Asad Sahi’ was arrested in summer 2024.
Ms O’Bryen was suspended for 18 months and at the end of her suspension, indefinite conditions were put on her practising certificate preventing her from being an owner of a law firm, compliance officer, holding client money or being a signatory on client account.
The solicitor was ordered to pay £25,000 in costs.
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