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The reporting of this case has been gratuitously scant of analysis. It raises a variety of serious concerns for justice generally and for property solicitors who risk jail for trying to earn a living. Mckay was a young NQ, not properly supervised, earning a modest salary in a small firm in Huddersfield. There was no evidence that he was “in” with Rowbotham or otherwise profited. He was just doing his job earning the same modest salary each month. He did not personally benefit. The CPS accepted that there was no evidence that Mckay had knowledge of Rowbotham’s wrongdoing at the time. On that basis it was wholly improper for GMP’s Ladkin to say “Mckay was fully aware…” as quoted above. The issue was whether Mckay suspected wrongdoing. He said he did not and that Rowbotham’s property purchases were not out of the ordinary given that he was a builder and that banks were jumping over themselves to give out buy-to-let mortgages at the time. One of the experts in the case was a Law Society money laundering guidance author who supported Mckay’s case. The jury, however, appear to have been blindsided by the prosecution silk’s assimilation of some so-called red flags and repeated deliberate references to someone called Billy Black – a man revealed as a villain only years later. The jury cannot have been intellectually equipped to deal with this case (AML provisions are complex enough for solicitors). As for sentencing it is absurd that Mckay received twice the sentence Rowbotham did. The Law Society should be looking at this case fairly and speaking up for the protection of solicitors.