Gregory Craig Davies

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

The Respondent, a director of Catherine Higgins Law Limited, was convicted on indictment on 28 January 2019 at Liverpool Crown Court of attempting to commit fraud by abuse of position and dishonestly making false representations, and was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment (concurrent). Over the period 1 September 2015 to 31 July 2016 he fraudulently diverted funds from his employer on 45 occasions (attempting on one more), defrauding £13,397.98, principally via false records and documents, and attempted to delete files remotely once investigation began. By way of an Agreed Outcome dealt with on the papers, the Tribunal found his admissions properly made and that the only appropriate sanction was to strike him off the Roll, ordering £4,000 costs.

Duties found breached:

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

Aggravating factors:

• Commission of serious criminal offences involving dishonesty leading to a custodial sentence
• Creation, presentation and reliance on multiple fraudulent documents in his role as a solicitor causing loss of over £13,000
• Fraudulent conduct across multiple files and client matters over a period of time, perpetrated persistently and in a sophisticated way
• Attempts to conceal offending / interfere with the investigation (remotely deleting files)
• Misconduct he knew or ought to have known breached obligations to uphold the administration of justice and protect the profession's reputation

Mitigating factors:

• No previous disciplinary matters before the SDT / lack of previous convictions
• Psychological diagnoses set out in Dr/Ms Card's reports
• Steps taken to return to a law-abiding life
• Early admissions and guilty pleas (full credit given in criminal proceedings)
• Asserted financial pressures, stress and difficult work conditions (not endorsed by the SRA)