Abosede Akinleye

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

The Respondent, a solicitor admitted in 2001, was convicted at Isleworth Crown Court in July 2016 of fraud by false representation for dishonestly concealing a Post Office account balance in a discretionary housing payment application, gaining £5,130. She self-reported the conviction. The SDT found breaches of Principles 1, 2 and 6 based on the conviction (no separate allegation of dishonesty was brought before the Tribunal). Given the seriousness of the criminal offence and lack of insight, the Tribunal struck her off the Roll and ordered costs of £3,300, with enforcement left to the Applicant's discretion.

Duties found breached:

• No taking unfair advantage
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank

Aggravating factors:

• Misconduct involved the commission of a criminal offence (fraud)
• Deliberate conduct
• Knew or ought to have known conduct was in material breach of obligations to protect the public and reputation of the profession
• No genuine insight shown
• Breach of position of trust; high culpability; motivated by personal gain

Mitigating factors:

• Voluntarily self-reported the conviction to the regulator
• Single episode in a previously unblemished career
• Personal difficulties including homelessness, threat of eviction and a traumatic family event
• Did not deliberately mislead the regulator

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