Dominic John Peter Ingle

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

The Respondent, a self-employed police station representative, was convicted on 6 January 2017 of two counts of fraud by dishonestly making false representations, having submitted around 40 fraudulent invoices to two solicitors' firms for police station attendances that never took place, causing losses of £4,103.25, to fund a cocaine addiction. He received a 7-month suspended sentence, unpaid work, rehabilitation requirements, compensation and a victim surcharge. He admitted the SRA allegation and accepted he should be struck off. The Tribunal found breaches of Principles 1, 2 and 6, found dishonesty established, and, applying SRA v Sharma, found no exceptional circumstances. He was struck off and ordered to pay costs of £1,000 (reduced from £2,882.22 due to his impecuniosity).

Duties found breached:

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

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonest conduct on 40 occasions over 3 months causing losses of £4,103.25
• Deliberate, planned and repeated conduct
• Personal benefit from fees for work not done
• Abuse of trust placed in him by two firms
• Resulted in a criminal conviction involving dishonesty
• Conduct he knew or ought to have known breached obligations to protect the public and reputation of the profession

Mitigating factors:

• Showed insight and admitted behaviour immediately when confronted
• Full co-operation with regulator and early frank admissions
• Remorseful
• Previously unblemished career of over 15 years
• Character references speaking highly of him
• Cocaine addiction as background to conduct