Solicitor who overcharged vulnerable widow is struck off

A solicitor has been struck off after he overcharged a client while taking more than six years to administer her estate.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) found that Jayesh Sasdev, who was admitted in 1987, charged Razia Idrees up to £75,000 to store documents at his firm’s premises, up to £10,000 for ‘estate agent’s commission’, as well as for liaising with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) when it questioned his activities.

The SDT said Mr Sasdev, who was sole equity owner of Ilford firm Archer Fields, acted in a way that was “deliberate, calculated and repeated” to target a vulnerable client, “preying on her lack of English” and the fact she had a young child.

Mr Sasdev had been instructed following the death of Ms Idrees’ husband in 2010. The deceased had himself worked as a solicitor and was the sole principal of a legal practice referred to as “ADC” in the SDT’s ruling.

In 2012 ADC’s offices were sold for £280,000, with Mr Sasdev telling his client he would have to rent a two-bedroom house, at a cost of £1,200 per month, to store the 7,600 files and documents that had been held there. The SRA later found that the annual cost for the storage should have been around £2,000.

Mr Sasdev told the SDT that he did not accept that his charges were excessive or unjustified and that he had acted honestly throughout the process. Any over-charging that might have occurred, he added, was a genuine mistake.

The tribunal rejected his evidence as “not credible”, pointing out that Ms Idrees had also not received any interim invoices so it would be harder for anyone to question the final bill.

The SDT added that there was no excuse for Mr Sasdev’s failure “to wind up the estate within a reasonable time”.

He was struck off and ordered to pay £69,233 in costs.