Solicitor struck off for scheme to obtain early legal aid payments
A solicitor has been struck off for professional misconduct by pursuing a scheme designed by him to recover money from the Scottish Legal Aid Board to which he was not entitled.
Edinburgh practitioner Massimo D’Alvito was given the penalty by the Scottish Solicitors' Discipline Tribunal after he admitted acting in a dishonest and deceitful fashion, by submitting 81 claims for payment to the Scottish Legal Aid Board over a two year period which contained invented outcomes, in order to secure payment at an earlier stage than he would otherwise be entitled. On six occasions he also fabricated and/or inaccurately described certain diets, creating an opportunity for him to fraudulently claim additions to the core fixed fees amounting to £360.
Although the respondent had repaid all overpayments to the Board, and the tribunal accepted that the value of these payments was low and that on the 81 occasions referred to he would have been entitled to payment of the sums claimed at a later stage, it regarded it as a serious matter that he had engaged in a deliberate and dishonest course of conduct over a two year period and had submitted false claims in which he had completed a certificate indicating their truth and accuracy.
Despite his co-operation with the Law Society of Scotland's investigation and his lack of previous record, the tribunal decided that such systematic abuse of public funds would seriously damage the reputation of the profession and clearly demonstrated that the respondent was not a fit person to be a solicitor. Accordingly it struck his name from the roll of solicitors.