Stephen Charles Pickard

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

The Respondent, a solicitor admitted in 1986, was convicted on indictment on 1 November 2016 of three counts of dishonestly making a false representation and one count of concealing/converting/transferring/removing criminal property, and sentenced to 8 years' imprisonment. He had lent his name and his firm's name to fraudulent Ponzi Private Placement Programme schemes, providing supposed due diligence and respectability to defraud public investors. The Tribunal found allegations of breaches of Principles 1, 2 and 6 proved beyond reasonable doubt and struck him off the Roll. Notably, dishonesty was NOT alleged in the disciplinary proceedings, though the underlying criminal convictions involved dishonesty.

Duties found breached:

• Integrity
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• Uphold public trust in the profession

Aggravating factors:

• Conviction for criminal offences including dishonesty resulting in 8 years' custodial sentence
• Misconduct was deliberate, calculated and repeated over a period of time
• Motivated by greed and desire for personal financial gain
• Caused colossal harm to members of the public (victims suffered stress, anxiety, depression, suicidal feelings, loss of homes)
• Harmed the reputation of the profession through local, national and international publicity
• Knew his actions breached his obligation to protect the public and the profession's reputation