Oliver Kavanagh was instructed to represent Mr A, who was charged with fraud by abuse of position. Mr A worked for the IT department of an international company. He was said to have fraudulently ordered several unauthorised SIM cards which were then used abroad, racking up hundreds of thousands of minutes and data usage. This led to Mr A’s employer being charged over £800,000 in their business telephone contract over the next six months. When Oliver received the case, the trial was less than two months away. Oliver met with Mr A and advised him on the evidence: on the one hand, the evidence that Mr A had ordered the SIM cards himself was very strong, but on the other hand there were large gaps in the evidence including the lack of evidence of any significant monetary gain by Mr A and weakness of the alleged link between Mr A and the usage of the SIM cards abroad.
After considering his options, Mr A decided to enter a guilty plea, despite being made aware that the likely sentence was in the range of 5-8 years. Oliver helped him draft a written basis of plea which explained that despite the loss being so high he had not foreseen a loss of anywhere near that amount and that he had only benefited by around £500 by selling the SIM cards. The prosecution accepted this basis and when the case came before the Judge for sentence, Oliver was able to not argue only to that the prosecution’s calculation of the loss to the company at £800k should be reduced to around £300k but that Mr A’s culpability was significantly reduced by his lack of awareness of the wider extent of the fraud. After applying some credit for his late guilty plea and for his extensive personal mitigation, including helpful references from family and friends drafted with the help of Mr A’s solicitor, this just allowed the Judge to pass a 2-year suspended sentence. This means that if Mr A complies with the requirements imposed by probation and does not reoffend, he will not have to spend any time in prison.
This result would not have been possible without the assistance of Sara Tombolis of Hollingsworth Edwards Solicitors
