Two U.K. Homeowners Score £780,000 Payout From Client Protection Fund After Discovery Of Attorney's Role In Pilfering The Titles To Their Homes Out From Under Them, But It Takes 13-Year Battle To Prevail

In Edinburgh, Scotland, the Herald Scotland reports:

• The Law Society of Scotland’s client protection fund has paid out £780,000 to two homebuyers, 13 years after a solicitor [attorney] fraud which led to them being deprived of the title to the Aberdeen flats they thought they owned.(1)
  
  The Herald revealed in 2014 how TV designer Sinclair Brebner and his neighbour engineer Colin Torr have been fighting for compensation since first discovering in 2007 that ‘their’ flats belonged to the trustee in bankruptcy of the man who had sold them, businessman David Pocock.
  
  Prior to The Herald’s intervention, the Law Society was considering offering the 2002 purchase price of the flats by way of compensation, or around £280,000, which would have bankrupted the innocent homebuyers. Now it has paid the £650,000 market value of the flats plus costs of £130,000 for multi-year litigation, which the claimants had to undergo before the fund would consider any pay-out.
  
  ***
  Falsified title deeds to the flats, substituting Mr Pocock’s company Howemoss for the actual owner Mr Pocock, were first uncovered as early as 2003 by the Registers of Scotland, and reported privately by a judicial factor appointed by the Law Society of Scotland. But it was not until 2007 that either Mr Brebner or Mr Torr were first made aware by their respective solicitors that more than four years after their supposed purchase, there were no deeds, and there might be a problem.

For more, see Law Society pays out £780,000 to homebuyer victims after Herald campaign.

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(1) The Client Protection Fund is the operating name of The Law Society of Scotland's Scottish Solicitors' Guarantee Fund. It exists to protect clients who have lost money because of the dishonesty of a solicitor [attorney] licensed in Scotland, or a member of their staff. The fund is paid for entirely by solicitor firms without the use of taxpayer money from government. The Client Protection Fund is a fund of last resort and in most cases will only compensate those who have tried all other options to recover their losses.

For similar "attorney ripoff reimbursement funds" that attempt to clean up the financial mess created by the dishonest conduct of attorneys licensed in the United States and Canada, see:

• Directory Of Lawyers' Funds For Client Protection (includes a listing for Canadian client protection funds, courtesy of the American Bar Association);
• Check the USA Client Protection Funds Map;
• Check the Canada Client Protection Funds Map.

Maps available courtesy of The National Client Protection Organization, Inc.