A law firm facilities manager who submitted fake invoices to suppliers has been sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.

Paul Fitzsimmons, 49, was a facilities and services manager at US law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton. Part of his duties included managing relationships with vendors of office and facilities supplies and services.

Fitzsimmons submitted fake invoices, estimated to total more than £1m, over a three-year period. The invoices were then sent to suppliers from his person email and phone.

He was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment at Southwark Crown Court.

Toby Britton, 53, a director of one of the companies Fitzsimmons liaised with as part of his role, was sentenced to four years and six weeks.

Fake companies with different directors listed were created and invoices paid for work that had not been carried out.

Fitzsimmons used the money to fund a ‘lavish lifestyle of high-end performance cars, luxury furniture and designer clothes’.

The pair were arrested in 2019 after the firm’s finance team raised concerns. An audit was conducted to investigate the losses, which uncovered a ‘wealth of transactional information between Fitzsimmons and Britton’.

A Cleary Gottlieb spokesperson said: ‘The firm uncovered the matter as part of its monitoring and oversight processes in 2018, and immediately reported it to the police and the Solicitors Regulation Authority.’

Detective chief inspector Lee Parish, from the fraud operations team at City of London Police, said: ‘Despite working for nearly twenty years at a prestigious law firm, it would appear that in itself was not enough for Fitzsimmons and that ultimately it was this greed that was his downfall.

‘Fitzsimmons abused his trusted position as facilities manager for his own personal gain to fuel an extravagant lavish lifestyle for him and his partner.

‘His relationship with Britton, despite being professional on the surface, was one forged through criminality and the two embarked on a reckless journey which has now resulted in time in prison for the pair of them.’

 

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