Solicitor Jailed for Legal Aid Fraud

Tue, 25 May 2010

A solicitor has been jailed for twelve months after being found guilty of falsely claiming £158,000 of public money. 34 year old Najaf Shah submitted a number of fraudulent legal aid bills, falsely claiming his law firm had carried out a number of cases of legal aid. In one instance, Mr Shah submitted invoices for the work he claimed had been carried out by a colleague, but it has since been revealed that the person in question no longer worked as a lawyer for the legal firm .

Mr Shah also exaggerated the extent of the work carried out in some cases, claiming on one form that lawyers from Luton based Alexander’s Solicitors had visited a client in prison more than one hundred times, when in fact they had only been twenty times.

Tax officials spotted that Mr Shah was submitting bills with legal costs far higher than those of rival law firms acting in the same cases, leading to a court date at Southwark Crown Court where Mr Shah admitted three charges of fraud and was sentenced for a year.

Mr Shah previously affirmed that he had only drawn up false documents as he had lost the originals on holiday. Judge Geoffrey Rivlin commented that Shah had abused the trust associated with his position.
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