Jane Margaret Helen Henry

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

Jane Margaret Helen Henry, an experienced consultant solicitor, faced five allegations. The Tribunal found four proved (allegation 1.4 of failing to cooperate with the SRA was not proved, and one sub-element of 1.5 regarding Rule 1.03 was not proved). She failed to carry out proper identity and AML checks on clients who turned out to be fraudsters facilitating a mortgage fraud, created and signed a false letter of authority forging clients' signatures over a weekend, accepted a police caution under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, and allowed client account to be used without underlying legal transactions. Dishonesty was expressly found proved (Twinsectra test) in respect of allegations 1.2 and 1.3. The Respondent did not attend and her qualified admissions were treated as denied. Finding no exceptional circumstances, the Tribunal struck her off and ordered costs of £23,500 (reduced from £32,676.58).

Duties found breached:

• No conflict between current clients
• Handle inadvertently received material
• No improper use of client money
• AML and crime-prevention compliance

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonesty proved
• Criminal offence (caution) proved
• Misconduct was deliberate, planned and calculated
• Conduct involved concealment/cover-up
• Attempted to blame others
• Showed no insight into misconduct
• Breach of position of trust as senior, experienced solicitor

Mitigating factors:

• Never denied the underlying facts
• Act of dishonesty was discrete and of brief duration
• Personal stress from concurrent Chancery litigation involving her partner
• She was deceived by another party (the fraudster clients)