Lawyer who stole £130k gets 3 years

Published on Wednesday 10 December 2008 23:30

A SOLICITOR who embezzled £130,000 from her clients has been jailed for three years for committing "one of the most serious breaches of trust" possible.

Valerie Macadam, 52, took thousands of pounds at a time from the bank accounts of clients whose financial affairs she had been entrusted with and from the life savings of others as she handled their wills. She stole the money from five clients of her Edinburgh law firm, Macadams SSC, over a six-year period.

Macadam, of Comiston Drive, Edinburgh, pled guilty to embezzlement at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last month. Her solicitor yesterday claimed her "bullying" former husband had pressured her into taking the money.

But Sheriff Douglas Allan rejected that claim and said solicitors who cheated their clients had to be punished severely.

"The public placed their faith in you and you breached that trust," he said. "The courts have long made it clear that because of this high, high level of trust embezzlement by solicitors is one of the most serious breaches of trust that can occur."

Macadam, a member of the New York Bar and a lawyer in the US Supreme Court, embezzled up to 88,000 from one client alone and counted her own cousin among her victims.

She stole from four women and a man between May 1997 and November 2003, while looking after their affairs at the firm in Charlotte Square, which specialised in conveyancing and wills.

Macadam wrote to her victims' banks asking for sums to be transferred out of their accounts and into the account of Macfactor Homes Ltd, the firm of her now former husband David Macadam. The cash was later transferred into her personal accounts.

The solicitor, who has remarried and is known as Valerie McKenzie, set up Macadams SSC in 1993, working as sole practitioner until Mr Macadam became a partner in 2003. She admitted she had used her clients' money to buy a second office in the city's Comiston Road.

Macadam was banned from practising as a solicitor after investigations by the Law Society of Scotland in 2004 following complaints against the practice.

She was later found guilty of professional misconduct and struck off the roll of solicitors in September 2005 by the Scottish Solicitors' Discipline Tribunal.

Nigel Beaumont, defending, said that the California-born Macadam had been a popular and successful solicitor who had featured on the cover of a law magazine during her career, but was now clinically depressed and had heart problems.

Macadam still faces a bill from the Law Society Guarantee Fund, which has repaid her victims and their beneficiaries for the money embezzled.

Philip Yelland, the Law Society of Scotland's director of standards, said: "The Law Society acted to protect the firm's clients and Ms Macadam has not been able to practise as a solicitor in Scotland since 2004."

He added: "Honesty and integrity are absolutely paramount within the solicitors' profession and those who are suspected of stealing from clients will be investigated."