Lancelot A. St. Martin Cowan

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

The Attorney was retained to handle the sale of the Complainant's house and received the proceeds in trust. Acting on wire instructions received by email (which had in fact been sent by a fraudster after the Complainant's email account was compromised), he transferred the funds to a third-party account without verifying the changed banking instructions, and the client never received her money. The Panel expressly rejected insinuations that the Attorney created a fake email to defraud the client. Applying fiduciary and trust-fund principles drawn from South African and Canadian authorities, the Panel found the Attorney breached Canon VII(b)(ii) (failure to account for trust monies) and Canon I(b) (failing to accept responsibility for the loss, damaging the honour and dignity of the profession). Allegations of inexcusable and deplorable negligence and the other six alleged canon breaches were dismissed as not proved to the criminal standard. The matter was set for a subsequent hearing on mitigation of sanction.

Duties found breached:

• Uphold public trust in the profession
• No improper use of client money