Dominic John Peter Ingle

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

The Respondent, a solicitor working as a self-employed police station representative, was convicted on 6 January 2017 of two counts of fraud by dishonestly making false representations (contrary to ss.1 and 2 Fraud Act 2006), having submitted around 40 false invoices to two solicitors' firms for police station attendances that had not taken place, causing losses of £4,103.25, to fund a cocaine addiction. He was sentenced to 7 months' imprisonment suspended for 24 months, 200 hours unpaid work, rehabilitation requirements, compensation and a victim surcharge. He admitted the allegation and accepted he must be struck off. The Tribunal found the allegation proved on the criminal standard, found his culpability high and his conduct involved dishonesty. Applying SRA v Sharma, with no exceptional circumstances, the Tribunal struck him off the Roll and ordered reduced costs.

Duties found breached:

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

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonest conduct on approximately 40 occasions over 3 months
• Deliberate, planned and repeated conduct
• Personal benefit from fees for work not done
• Abuse of trust placed in him by two instructing firms
• Conduct resulted in a criminal conviction involving dishonesty
• Knew or ought to have known conduct was in material breach of obligations

Mitigating factors:

• Showed insight and admitted behaviour immediately when confronted
• Full co-operation with the regulator and early, open admissions
• Genuine remorse expressed in correspondence
• Previously unblemished career of over 15 years
• Positive character references