Lawyer with ‘overvalued belief in prayer’ sent £2m of clients’ cash to fraudsters

Asolicitor has been struck off after falling for a lottery scam and sending almost £2m of his clients’ money to fraudsters, claiming his belief in God meant he was unable to make rational decisions.

The clients involved included a charity for infirm women based in Norwich and two individuals for whom he held lasting power of attorney. The accounts of the law firm of which he was a partner were also affected.

At a hearing last month, whose proceedings have now been published, Hugh Lansdell accepted all the allegations made by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) and said he had been going through a period of “intense stress”. He will have to pay tribunal costs of £27,000.

Mr Lansdell, a senior partner at Hansells, a Norfolk law firm, had acted as an intermediary between the organisations, trusts and individuals and the wealth manager Charles Stanley. Around Easter 2015 he received a letter informing him he had won £825,000 in a lottery.

After contacting the organisers he was told an error had been made and his winnings in fact totalled £1.8m.

The tribunal papers read: “All this was untrue – the lottery win was a fiction and the individuals with whom Mr Lansdell was in contact

were, in fact, seeking to defraud him by obtaining substantial payments in respect of supposed fees which he needed to pay in order to secure the release of his winnings.” Over the next two years he proceeded to make 59 payments from Hansells’ accounts, registered on the ledgers of 29 different clients, totalling £1.5m. In addition to this Mr Lansdell instructed Charles Stanley to sell investments owned by various trusts and charities, much of which was to pay fees of almost £500,000 associated with the “lottery”. Hansells discovered the payments in April 2017 and launched an investigation. Mr Lansdell was suspended on Aug 2 and admitted what he had done two days later. In November that year he was declared bankrupt. A report sent to the SRA by a psychologist, Annie Beresford, said he had developed an “overvalued belief in the power of prayer and the guidance of God”, which had affected his decision making. After being contacted by the SRA, Mr Lansdell made no attempt to deny his behaviour and accepted that his career as a solicitor was over. As he had been declared bankrupt, the losses have been absorbed by Hansells and its insurer. The number of transactions Lansdell made from Hansells’ client accounts, totalling £1.5m The tribunal costs that Lansdell, who has been declared bankrupt, was ordered to pay