Man with Four Fraud Charges Against Him Cleared

Stuart Miller’ Fraud Lawyers represented Mr U in December of last year after he was arrested and detained in North West London.

Mr U was searched under Section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, at which time a small amount of herbal cannabis was found on his person.

Whilst our client was in custody, officers submitted a data request to the insurance company that Mr U’s car was registered to.

While evaluating the insurance policy, the officers noted that the policy by way of a “driver’s declaration” specified that the policy holder must not have been convicted of any previous conviction including both motoring and criminal convictions.

When questioned on this specification in interview, our client made clear that there was no indication online that he was to declare any previous non-motoring convictions.

Following this, the police returned to their evaluation of our client’s insurance provider and turned their attention now to the process of obtaining a quote. In this online process, they allegedly found a question prompting the prospective insurance holder to declare if they or any other person on the policy had any previous non-motoring convictions.

At this time, our client had two previous convictions, already spent, that the police highlighted as being “unspent.”

At this time, the Crown Prosecution Service decided to charge our client, Mr U, with 4 counts of fraud, leading to a police interview at Islington Police Station.

Our client instructed Stuart Miller Solicitors adept Fraud department, including Taylor Dimond and Abu Kibla that he had made no false representations to the insurance provider. Mr U was scheduled to attend trial at Wood Green Crown Court in late 2022.

Stuart Miller Solicitors sharp-sighted and detail-oriented solicitors observed upon review of the evidence presented by the police and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) that the case against our client was not strong enough to warrant four charges of fraud.

A spokesperson for this case and Stuart Miller Solicitors stated:

“The CPS’s case was weak given that they had incorrectly identified our client’s ‘spent convictions’ and therefore would not be able to satisfy the criteria of dishonesty in relation to a fraud offence.”

In this case, our spokesperson is referring to the criteria of dishonesty laid out in the Sentencing Guidelines for convictions of Fraud by the Sentencing Council.

Stuart Miller’s defence Solicitors made representations to the Crown that outlined our client’s innocence by showing that the two convictions highlighted by the CPS were already spent, considering they had occurred in 2017 & 2018. The 2017 conviction was dealt with by a fine, and therefore the conviction was spent 1 year after the date of conviction. The 2018 conviction was dealt with by a community order, and therefore the conviction was spent 1 year from the date of conviction.

Further representations were made that argued the charges against our client did not have a realistic prospect of conviction as the alleged “offences” could not be made out.

Upon response to these representations, the CPS offered no evidence, and the Court discontinued the case. Our client had all four charges against him dropped.

If you have had charges of fraud made against you by the police, Crown Prosecution Service or National Crime Agency, reach out to us now for expert representation from fraud solicitors at one of London’s top 1% criminal defence firms.

Contact us today.