Elena Quinlivan

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

The Respondent was convicted at Southwark Crown Court on 9 June 2011 upon her own confession of seven counts of conspiracy to obtain a money transfer by deception, and sentenced on 17 September 2012 to two years' imprisonment with a confiscation order of £108,405.46. The Tribunal found she had breached Rules 1.01, 1.02 and 1.06 of the Solicitors Code of Conduct 2007. Although the underlying offences involved deception, dishonesty was not expressly pleaded in the allegation, so the Tribunal declined to deal with the matter on the basis of dishonesty. The Tribunal proceeded in the Respondent's absence. Given the seriousness of the criminal conviction, the Respondent was struck off the Roll and ordered to pay costs of £2,500.

Duties found breached:

• Uphold public trust in the profession
• No conflict between current clients

Aggravating factors:

• Misconduct involved the commission of a criminal offence
• Misconduct repeated and continued over a period of time
• Motivated by personal profit
• Convicted on seven counts involving a very large amount of money (over £1.3 million in mortgages)
• Ought reasonably to have known she was in material breach of obligations

Mitigating factors:

• Pleaded guilty in the criminal proceedings
• Sentencing judge had referred to 'very real mitigation'

⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["review_dishonesty_finding_cue_present"]