Young Client Receives Suspended Sentence Following Strategic Basis Of Plea And Strong Mitigation

Our client was charged with fraud by abuse of position. He was the bookkeeper at a company and made a gain of over £20,000.

Our client intended to plead guilty and was entirely remorseful. Having taken clear instructions from our client, we identified issues within the prosecution case. We advised our client to enter a guilty plea on a basis of facts that corrected our client’s responsibilities and disproved the companies’ claim that our client had caused redundancies. The prosecution accepted the basis of plea.

Ahead of the sentencing hearing we obtained character references and our client wrote a letter to the Judge. We also had a positive pre-sentence report.

At the sentencing hearing, counsel, Victoria Taylor, made submissions that the categorisation within the sentencing guidelines should not be applied rigidly, as our client was just over the threshold for a higher category of harm which had a starting point of 3 years imprisonment. Victoria addressed our client’s good character, remorse and steps taken to address offending behaviour.

The Judge imposed 16 months imprisonment suspended for 18 months with a rehabilitation activity requirement and an unpaid work requirement.

Ellie received the following feedback from his family: