6 years for judge and lover who stole £1m for holidays in Barbados
A judge was jailed for six years yesterday for stealing up to £1million from his private legal clients.
Simon Kenny, 60, has been put in a protective custody unit to keep him safe from fellow criminals.
He and his former lover and assistant, emma Coates, 47, plundered customer accounts at their solicitors’ firm. They blew some of the money on holidays to Barbados and a £15,000 log cabin love nest.
Their firm’s accountant committed suicide when he realised he had been duped.
during an extraordinary trial at Southwark Crown Court in South London, Kenny and Coates traded insults across the courtroom. She screamed obscenities about the size of his manhood as they tried to blame each other for the four-year fraud.
Coates used the stolen cash to build up a property portfolio, paying off four mortgages on homes across Sussex. She also bought
‘They tried to blame each other’
the log cabin with hot tub, a Range Rover and treated her friends to a £27,000 holiday in Barbados and racing trips to Cheltenham and goodwood.
Kenny covered up the thefts by telling staff at CK Solicitors in Selsey, West Sussex, he had moved money to offshore accounts because of the banking crisis. The company’s accountant, Robert Foskett, killed himself in March 2011. In his suicide note, he wrote: ‘I am so sorry but the pressure mounts on me. I was lured into signing an audit certificate by Simon Kenny which I should not have.
‘He assured me funds would be in the following week from his family trust but that became untrue.’
Mr Foskett left a note to his secretary, saying: ‘We have tumbled on a fraud that is probably £300,000, it may even be £600,000 or more.
‘Quite nasty – unfortunately when people do this sort of thing they don’t care a damn who gets hurt.’
His death led to the closure of CK Solicitors and an investigation by Sussex Police’s major fraud unit. But within months Coates had set up another legal firm while on bail and stole £85,000 from an elderly client’s estate in 2011.
By the time of their arrest, the affair had ended and Kenny tried to pin the blame on Coates. He claimed she hacked his email account and sent messages in his name.
The court was told Kenny had been planning to leave his home in St Leonards-on-Sea, east Sussex, before the trial and was considered a flight risk. He is due to inherit his family’s business interests in his native Australia. ‘Simon Kenny is ruined in every way,’ said Stephen Wedd, defending him. ‘The word has got round at Wandsworth prison and Mr Kenny is in the protection wing there given his former role as a deputy judge.’
Richard Wormald, defending Coates, said she had used clients’ accounts as a personal piggy bank.
He added: ‘There was this steady glide, descent from taking money that she thought she was owed or entitled to, to taking money that she knew that she was not owed or entitled to.’
Richard Milne, prosecuting, said the realisation that he had been duped was a major factor in Mr Foskett’s suicide.
jailing Kenny and Coates for six years, judge Peter Testar told them: ‘It is difficult to imagine a more spectacular breach of trust.’
Of Coates, from Bognor Regis, he said: ‘She has an instinct for excess and extravagance. She has shown no regret or remorse.’
A third defendant, Stephen Hiseman, 60, who lives in France and is a close friend of Kenny, was jailed for two-and-a-half years for switching £65,000 of client money to his own bank account. All three were convicted of fraud by a jury.
detective Constable Nikki Thiim, of Sussex Police’s economic crime unit, said: ‘These convictions have exposed the deceit and greed of a group of individuals who have consistently denied exploiting the trust placed in them, and the theft of almost £1million. The fraud caused property transactions to fail, the theft of family inheritances and the dissipation of child trust funds.’
As a deputy district judge, Kenny sentenced scores of criminals in courts across Sussex.