A former legal cashier with a criminal conviction for fraud has been banned from working in a legal practice by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

Omer Mian, who worked as a legal cashier for Albany Solicitors at 16 Park Grove in Cardiff, was convicted of conspiracy to defraud in July 2017. The Crown Court found that Mian had fraudulently provided employment references for several mortgage applications. He was also found to have certified mortgage applications for people he later accepted never to have met.

Mian, who was born in 1973, was sentenced to 29 months imprisonment and was released in January 2019.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) alleged that it would be undesirable for Mian to be involved in a legal practice given his criminal conviction. It also invited the tribunal to impose a fine.

According to the judgment, Mian admitted the allegation and did not oppose the making of a section 43 order preventing him from working in a legal practice. However, he did oppose the imposition of a financial penalty, telling the tribunal he could not afford to pay a fine.

The tribunal said it was ‘satisfied in the light of the nature of the conviction it would be undesirable for the respondent to be involved in a legal practice’. However, it did not impose a financially penalty.

The SRA applied for costs of £6,086, stating that its 455 pages of documents were not ‘excessive’, as claimed by the tribunal. However, costs were reduced to £4,086.

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