Solicitor jailed after defrauding £4m to pay for luxury lifestyle
Wakefield solicitor Lina Box, 67, has been imprisoned for seven years for stealing £4m from client accounts.
Box worked at Dixon, Coles and Gill solicitors, a 200 year-old firm in Wakefield, which was forced to close its doors in January last year. Its premises have been sold off and staff made redundant.
She was arrested the following month and bailed. Box was then suspended by the Solicitors Regulation Authority later that year.
According to the BBC she was jailed for seven years at Leeds Crown Court after stealing £4m from client accounts, including the estates of deceased clients and the Church of England.
Her deception went on for more than 12 years, the court heard, and the proceeds of her crime were spent on holidays abroad, shopping trips and luxury hotels.
She spent £230,000 on a public relations firm which worked for her husband’s firm of funeral directors.
The court reportedly heard that Box, of Halifax Road, Dewsbury, took more than £63,000 from the Church of England while acting as a registrar for the Diocese of Wakefield.
Simon Higginbotham, from the CPS Specialist Fraud Division, said: “Linda Box used her position as a trusted partner in a law firm to steal millions of pounds from the estates of those who had died, depriving their grieving friends and families of their rightful inheritance.
“She also abused her senior position of responsibility within the Church of England by stealing.”
After the sentencing, Det Insp Dan Tillett, of West Yorkshire Police, said: “She preyed on vulnerable people at one of the most difficult times of their lives.”
