Solicitor is struck off after paying his mortgage with £166,000 of medicine cash – which he claimed he earned as a fictitious ‘life coach’

A solicitor has been struck off after he paid off his mortgage with £166,000 of drugs money – which he claimed he earned with a fictitious ‘life coach’ job.

Paul Green, 47, was a respected solicitor before he got involved in a scheme to launder his brother’s drug money by using it to pay a mortgage on an expensive house.

This involved the solicitor keeping a fake diary to explain the incredible expenditure of £166,000 as the profits of ‘life coaching sessions’.

When the scheme was discovered and hundreds of thousands of pounds were seized from the brothers, Green was jailed for 26 months and his brother was jailed for six years.

Now the Solicitors Regulation Authority has struck the lawyer off, saying that his crimes were ‘serious acts of dishonesty committed over an extended period which benefited [him] and his brother’.

Green was admitted as a solicitor in 2008 and began working at Barlow Robbins LLP as an associate solicitor.

In 2010 Green took out a mortgage on a house, but lied to Santander bank by claiming that he would be the sole person living at the property and paying off the mortgage.

In fact it would be his brother paying it with illicitly gained cash, and the house would transfer to him after the mortgage was paid off – effectively laundering the money.

Paul Green’s brother, James Green, had been involved in large-scale cannabis dealing.

Misdirecting the bank amounted to mortgage fraud, and the intention to hide his brother’s cash through the mortgage was money laundering.

The property was in Berrywood Gardens in Hedge End, Hants, where the average house price this year was almost £410,000 per Rightmove.

Between 2010 and 2015, Green received 62 cash payments into his bank accounts from his brother totalling £49,871,04.

This was in addition to 60 direct debit payments, totalling £47,528.55.

Green attempted to obscure where the money from his brother was coming from by keeping a fake diary about his side-job as a ‘life coach’.

At least £166,000 of illicitly gained cash was used to pay off the mortgage 10 years earlier than expected.

The two men were discovered in 2018 when Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs were led to a storage unit used by the brother during an operation targeting illicit tobacco trade.

In the unit they found £341,547 in cash, silver ingots and watches.

Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary took over the investigation and searched the Berrywood address – which revealed 1.9kg of cannabis, the fake diaries and extensive evidence of drug dealing.

The pair’s phones were examined and it revealed ‘triumphant’ texts between the two, exclaiming that their scheme was working and the house would soon go to to Paul’s brother.

Paul Green self-reported to the SRA in 2019 that he had been interviewed by the police but denied the allegations against him.

He self-reported again in 2022 when he was due to appear before Southampton Magistrates Court in relation to money laundering, and told them he would plead not guilty.

Green was tried and convicted to 26 months imprisonment at the Southampton Crown Court, Hants, for conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and converting criminal property.

His brother was handed a six-year jail sentence for drug supply and fraud offences.

His Honour Judge Peter Clifford Henry said in sentencing remarks that Green had ‘thrown away his good name’.

He said: ‘[The defence] has argued on your behalf, Paul Green, that there is no evidence of any significant planning.

‘It was not sophisticated, and it was simply allowing your brother to pay money into your accounts.

‘I do not accept that. To approach it in that way is to ignore the fact that albeit I said in my view the mortgage fraud was in itself a small part of the sentencing exercise, it was a significant part in the scheme to get the laundering going.

‘There was a plan to set up this mortgage in order to buy this house and the drug money was used over a considerable period of time to pay off that mortgage.

‘It is significant that drug money was used to pay off the mortgage before even the first mortgage payment was due, and it is clear from the somewhat triumphant messages between you two brothers when the mortgage was paid off ten years earlier that what was expected’.

He continued: ‘I have heard evidence of your positive good character, as I say, during the trial, including how proud you were to have become a solicitor.

‘Sadly, by your criminal conduct, you have thrown all that away.

‘You will have no chance now of continuing with that profession undoubtedly, sadly, it will be difficult for you to find employment of that sort of calibre.

‘Also, of course, you have thrown away your good name’.

Now, a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has struck the solicitor off and charged him £3,000 in costs, adding that ‘there is a need to protect the public’ from Green’s ‘dishonest conduct’.

It said: ‘There is a need to protect the public and the reputation of the legal profession from future risk of [Paul Green].

‘[Green] was convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and converting money.

‘These are serious acts of dishonesty committed over an extended period which benefited [Paul Green] and his brother, Mr James Green.

‘This conduct is dishonest. In the circumstances, an appropriate sanction to protect the public which is proportionate to the seriousness of the admitted misconduct is that [Green] should be struck off the Roll of Solicitors.

‘Further that the Respondent should pay the SRA’s costs in the sum of £3,000.’