Times Article 6th March 2000

An old one but here is the article on Rodney that featured in the Times, 6th March 2000

STRUCK OFF!

6 March 2000

The high flying solicitor Rodney

Hylton-Potts was struck off and

imprisoned for his part in a mortgage

fraud.  But this has not stopped him

from putting his legal training to work

legally.  He talks to Francis Gibb

about his crime and his new career

It is not every day that a solicitor ends up as an inmate of Her Majesty’s prisons.  So when Rodney Hylton-Potts was jailed for mortgage fraud, he found himself remarkably popular with other inmates.  ‘They queued up at my cell to ask advice on all kinds of things’ he recalls.  Hylton-Potts did not ask for payment in the shape of the usual prison barter of phone cards, but he nonetheless annoyed the authorities.  ‘They decided I was running a business, so I was moved from my open prison to a closed one.  Basically, I had to start all over again to prove myself.’

Starting all over again is something Hylton-Potts, 55, knows all about.  He was struck off the roll of solicitors.  So it is rare – even unprecedented for a struck-off solicitor to set himself up in the law.  But since Hylton-Potts’s release in 1998 after half the sentence (maximum remission for good behaviour) he is doing just that.  He is now a legal consultant advertising his services on the Internet, where he offers expertise across 12 areas – including divorce, criminal, insolvency and conveyancing – and describes himself as a  ‘top international lawyer,’ who ‘was a leading London solicitor for 25 years.’

And he is succeeding.  Despite protests from several solicitors, Hylton-Potts is breaking no law.  He has cleared what he does with the Law Society and insists that he is not holding himself out as a solicitor.  ‘That would be wrong, a criminal offence.  What I offer is a cost-effective, no-frills service.  I encourage clients to do what they can themselves but I help them with the documents, how to comply with court rules, that kind of thing.  Good solicitors have nothing to fear from me.  If I need counsel, then I instruct a solicitor.  In turn, they often refer the clients.

The case has nonetheless raised the issue of regulation and public protection.  The Law Society is robust in prosecuting bogus solicitors – last year there were three such cases.  But disqualified legal advisers, such as some claims handlers, it has no power over.  Nor can it stop struck-off solicitors offering legal advice although the society has asked the Government to look at this area.  But Hylton-Potts believes that there is support in the profession for someone like him to do what he does.  He has indemnity insurance and adheres to rules of client confidentiality.  ‘I challenge the society to carry out a poll.  I have many supportive clients; they know all about me and they don’t care.  They say ‘Rodney, you do a good job.  And they think – there but for the grace of God go I.’

He is remarkably upbeat.  The walls are lined  with All England Law Reports.  There is a photograph of Lord Denning.

But it cost him his second marriage and left him with no property or funds.  He is not bitter, however.  At that time, 1996, he was working from Knightsbridge, a sole practitioner with a high profile, Asil Nadir’s stockbroker was one of his clients.  He mixed with politicians (he was a member of the Society of Conservative Lawyers) and high-living businessmen.  Among them was John Whybrow, a property developer.

Whybrow first came to fame when he made £500,000 profit on a controversial sale of three cemeteries in Westminster for 15p nine years ago.  Hylton-Potts acted for him.  Whybrow went on to set up a mortgage fraud, hoodwinking banks into making loans so he could buy three Scottish hotels at inflated prices.  The pair were charged with conspiracy to defraud.  Hylton-Potts who did the paperwork for the deals, says he knew nothing of the fraud itself.  But despite an ‘excellent’ defence team, he went down.  ‘First, I did not keep attendance notes of all meetings – only the important ones.  That did me no favours.  The jury could conclude dishonesty that I conspired with   Whybrow, or that I was an idiot.  They went for the former.

The pair, both convicted, blamed each other in the traditional ‘cut-throat defence.’  Hylton-Potts points out that the Crown said the gain to him was £200,000.  ‘I had a very successful practice, a house in Knightsbridge… is it likely I would be involved in fraud for £20,000?’  But the Jury took against him and his lifestyle. ‘I lived above the Loosebox Wine Bar.  The jury heard about champagne, fast cars.  I wasn’t doing wills in Surrey or probate in Berkshire, I was a big player.  And I was a complete fool.’  But he refused to plea bargain.  His counsel indicated that he could get one third off the sentence for a guilty plea.

‘I would not have anything to do with it.  And do you know why?  I was not going to plead guilty for something I had not done and the reason was my children (he has five, then aged 21 years down to three) and – in the future – for their children, and also for my mother, then still alive, notwithstanding it might mean ten months more in prison.  I was under intense pressure from my wife, my legal team, friends.  I was fighting for my life.  And I would still do it again.’

Unsurprisingly, prison was a severe shock.  He was transported in a ‘sweatbox’, a van in which prisoners are tightly packed in cubicles.  Hylton-Potts, a claustrophobic, had to be sedated.  At Brixton he first shared a cell with a homosexual child abuser, then with Frenchman, a Cannes casino bribery bagman.  Prison he found totally inhuman, but like the Army.  If you keep the rules and treat the officers decently, then they reciprocate.  The worst part of the experience he says was the noise.  ‘I got beaten up one night after telling a heroin addict to turn down his radio.’  His fellow inmates on the ward wanted to sort out the attacker, but Hylton-Potts insisted on going to the prison officers.

He played everything by the book.  ‘I was completely focused on getting out of there as soon as I possibly could,’ he says.  Prison work is in short supply and his was cleaning.

‘You can either clean superficially or thoroughly,  I decided to do the latter.  The prison was cleaner than it had ever been.  When Ann Widdecombe visited, they asked me to clean the whole prison.’  He kept out of the deals and away from the drugs, and avoided arguments. ‘My wife brought me a Gucci belt to wear – and someone spotted it and wanted it.  You don’t argue.’  He spent his time keeping fit and abreast of the law and the Woolf reforms and with regular prison calls to the family, survived.  Tips of that survival include keeping ‘girlie’ pictures on his wall to avoid homosexual advances.

The worst moment, he recalls, was Valentine’s Day 1998 when he received an envelope containing cards from his children but none from his wife.  ‘I realised then that my marriage was breaking up and I exploded with grief.  The noise, drug abuse, humiliation, was as nothing compared with that’

The experience is clearly not far from his mind, although now his energies are with his consultancy.  Friends and clients have been supportive. ‘I don’t recommend the experience’ he says, ‘but having been through it, you can’t put a price on it.  And it helps in fighting for my clients because I never, never, give in.’