Warning - do not use wolstenholmes solicitors

Catwoman8950

happy_to_help wrote: »

has anyone got a successful phone number or e mail address for this company?
Thanks

Stirling Law
Greengate Business Centre
No. 2 Greengate Street
Oldham OL4 1FN
Tel: 0161 624 5777
Fax: 0161 624 5888
E-mail: <firstname>.<lastname>@stirling-law.co.uk

mjmal51

Anybody here got access to Crain's Manchester Business?, it is subscription only to read complete articles, but today I am able to see snippets re. Wolstenholmes
"The former owner of two failed companies was the person in “de facto” charge of Cheadle-based law firm Wolstenholmes prior to its collapse ..."
and
"Failed mobile phone dealer ran law firm, say staff"

Would be good to see the complete article!

anotherproblem

Well any interested parties that are out there; my soliciter decided to try to register my property with limited paperwork (what was actually missing was the sdlt form - bear in mind that the property was only £117,000 and I have been to hell and back to get the other paperwork) The reason they did this was because the form was ticked on my file as done but with no other evidence of it having been completed.

The land registry refused to register the property without it. So we have to get another form completed and guess what. I have to trapse up the soliciters with another £100.00. because the property was not registered within 30 days penalties had been incurred. Not only that, had the time have gone past Fridays date the penalty would double to £200. It never ceases to amaze me how wonderfully accomodating these goverment areas are. I mean the SRA step in and grab the Wolstoneholmes files - the files get lost and are placed by the SRA all over the place and then when one manages to track half of them down one incurres penalties because the form is not sent in in time. The moral of the story is. Dont expect fair play or understanding or help from any of these areas cos you aint going to get any. :mad: and they will fleece you for all that they can.

Then I phone DWF (having nagged the life out of them for missing files) The sellors file has finally been found. Bear in mind there was nothing on my file at all. Nothing had been passed across at completion. For weeks I have nagged them about the missing file. At last the file has been found. I was told this by some one in the Liverpool office. So I speak to the Manchester office only to be asked (:mad: as if should not have been given this information ) how had I found out. I made it clear that what was on the sellors file belonged to me it had cost me dearly and that I was not going away untill it had been sorted. For the 99th time I had to explain that the sellors had emigrated they had gone my money was gone I had been left with no paperwork no indemnity insurence no statutory declarations or letters or anything. So they are supposed to phone back tomorrow to tell me what they have.

Watch this space.


The SRA very kindly informed me that even though I filled the forms in in the middle of January (they told me to!) others had taken precedence. I had received a letter from them in january stating very clearly that a caseworker would be assigned to me and been told on the phone it would take two weeks. I said so you mean that my paperwork keeps being put to the bottom of the pile :mad:. And was told that yes this was the case. It seems to me that you dont trust anyone and you nag the hell out of them to get the service that they are supposed to give. They are in such a muddle of their own creation that it beggers belief.

So my advice is dont let the grass grow under your feet, dont trust anyone and keep two steps ahead.

Catwoman8950

mjmal51 wrote: »

Anybody here got access to Crain's Manchester Business?, it is subscription only to read complete articles, but today I am able to see snippets re. Wolstenholmes
"The former owner of two failed companies was the person in “de facto” charge of Cheadle-based law firm Wolstenholmes prior to its collapse ..."
and
"Failed mobile phone dealer ran law firm, say staff"

Would be good to see the complete article!

Yes, indeed it would

mjmal51

Another snippet I got today from Crains' new article is
"Saddique and another consultant, Mario Cardinali, conducted interviews with potential new recruits and instructed money to be transferred ."
which confirms the names given by Brahan seer
I know that a reporter from Crains sent pms to posters here weeks ago trying to get info for an article after the intervention, so it would be nice if he could now give us more on the new article.

Just manged to grab the info from an American legal blog!
"
Failed mobile phone dealer ran law firm, say staff

• Recent Cases updated &nbsp2010/02/22 10:13


The former owner of two failed companies was the person in “de facto” charge of Cheadle-based law firm Wolstenholmes prior to its collapse in December, Crain's has discovered.
Ex-staff who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Wasim Saddique, who was brought in by former managing partner Nasser Ilyas as consultant to advise the firm, was effectively running it. Saddique is also said to have brought in his own people to head key functions in the firm, such as accounts and IT."
Saddique and another consultant, Mario Cardinali, conducted interviews with potential new recruits and instructed money to be transferred from client accounts to the office account. It is not clear whether the firm carried out background checks on either of them.

homelessmat

mjmal51 wrote: »

Another snippet I got today from Crains' new article is
"Saddique and another consultant, Mario Cardinali, conducted interviews with potential new recruits and instructed money to be transferred ."
which confirms the names given by Brahan seer
I know that a reporter from Crains sent pms to posters here weeks ago trying to get info for an article after the intervention, so it would be nice if he could now give us more on the new article.

Just manged to grab the info from an American legal blog!
"
Failed mobile phone dealer ran law firm, say staff

• Recent Cases updated &nbsp2010/02/22 10:13


The former owner of two failed companies was the person in “de facto” charge of Cheadle-based law firm Wolstenholmes prior to its collapse in December, Crain's has discovered.
Ex-staff who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Wasim Saddique, who was brought in by former managing partner Nasser Ilyas as consultant to advise the firm, was effectively running it. Saddique is also said to have brought in his own people to head key functions in the firm, such as accounts and IT."
Saddique and another consultant, Mario Cardinali, conducted interviews with potential new recruits and instructed money to be transferred from client accounts to the office account. It is not clear whether the firm carried out background checks on either of them.

You can see the full article by going to google and entering "mario cardinali wolstenholmes". When the results come up, rather than clicking on the "usual" link (it's the 3rd one in the results) which gives you the subscribers only page, click the "cached" link and it gives you the full article.

mjmal51

OK, here it is then
"Failed mobile phone dealer ran law firm, say staff

By [EMAIL="mfahy&#64;crain.com"]Michael Fahy[/EMAIL]

The former owner of two failed companies was the person in “de facto” charge of Cheadle-based law firm Wolstenholmes prior to its collapse in December, Crain's has discovered.

Ex-staff who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Wasim Saddique, who was brought in by former managing partner Nasser Ilyas as consultant to advise the firm, was effectively running it. Saddique is also said to have brought in his own people to head key functions in the firm, such as accounts and IT.

Saddique and another consultant, Mario Cardinali, conducted interviews with potential new recruits and instructed money to be transferred from client accounts to the office account. It is not clear whether the firm carried out background checks on either of them.

Hampered

“Their word was law,” said one former employee.

A person who worked in the accounts department said the firm was owed around £1.9m by creditors, but efforts made to recover debts were hampered because some clients refused to pay on the grounds of inadequate or non-existent service.

“It was a mess,” the person said. “They'd transfer £20,000 or £50,000 with no paperwork to back it up. It was impossible to see how they arrived at the amounts withdrawn.”

A lawyer, who held a senior role at the firm, said he left in the first half of last year because he “didn't like the way it was being run and I didn't like the way they were treating staff”.

“They were not professional people,” he said. “When it eventually did close, I was surprised to see how bad it was, but I was not shocked.”

Saddique, 32, already has a number of company failures behind him. He was a director and main shareholder of Dialamobile Ltd — a mail order retailer which sold mobile phones on the Orange, 3 and T-Mobile Networks. It offered mobile phones on long term contacts with “cashback” rewards at the end of deals.

When the firm was placed into administration in 2007 it owed money to thousands of customers who had signed cashback deals.

Dialamobile was also owed £1.6m from Everplus Ltd — another company owned by Saddique which was wound up in the High Court in January 2008 following a petition by trade creditor Dell Products Ltd.

The last report filed by Dialamobile's administrator, RSM Tenon, said that it was “continuing investigations into certain amounts paid out by the company” to directors shortly before it was appointed.

Intervention

Saddique was also a director of OffPlan Properties Ltd, A1 Property Solutions Ltd, Txt2Mobiles Ltd and Fun 2 Your Mobile Ltd, none of which filed accounts and were either voluntarily or compulsorily wound up.

Wolstenholmes was effectively closed down following an intervention by the Solicitors Regulation Authority on Christmas Eve, and five former partners were subsequently suspended for “suspected dishonesty and breaches of the Solicitors' Accounts and Practice Rules”.

Ilyas left the firm in September, but was still one of the five suspended — as was Imran Hussein, who took over as managing partner for the three-month period prior to the firm's closure.

More than 100 complaints were made about the firm's conduct prior to the intervention.

The SRA made available emergency funding of more than £3m and appointed Kieran Walshe from the Manchester office of DWF to sort through “thousands” of live conveyancing files.

A press release issued by Wolstenholmes on October 5, 2009, announcing Hussein's appointment as managing partner, claimed it was setting “a precedent” by expanding during the recession and creating 140 jobs nationwide.

It also mentioned that the firm had been established in 1818 and had “seen off five previous recessions”.

In recent years, the firm had secured a greater portion of its work through websites such as its own wolstenholmes.co.uk site and its bulkconveyancingquotes.co.uk site. It also boasted of having “the largest legal marketing department in the UK”.

The former head of the firm's marketing department, Simon Jarret Williams, was quoted as saying that the firm was “constantly communicating with stakeholders to ensure the right thing gets done”.

However, both the Legal Complaints Service and the Solicitors' Regulation Authority heard from scores of clients last year.

They said that transactions were being held up, that paperwork had gone missing, that title deeds had not been transferred to new owners and that stamp duty paid by them had not been received by HM Revenue and Customs.

Last week, an SRA spokesman told Crain's that its agents, DWF and Leeds-based Gordons, were making progress and working through “an exceptionally large number of files”.

The SRA spokesman added: “They have prioritised the cases of former clients with live matters.

“All such clients have now been contacted and our agents are busy taking instructions on the return of monies and completing outstanding post-completion matters.

“Any former Wolstenholmes clients with outstanding queries can phone DWF on 0161 603 5044.”

and a link to an older article
http://66.102.9.132/search?q=cache:SdAJXcJUUEcJ:www.crainsmanchesterbusiness.co.uk/article/20100125/SUB/301259965/1071/legal+Victim+asks+why+wasn%27t+law+firm+closed+sooner&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

anotherproblem

The SRA spokesman added: “They have prioritised the cases of former clients with live matters.

“All such clients have now been contacted and our agents are busy taking instructions on the return of monies and completing outstanding post-completion matters.


Tripe absolute tripe - I have not been contacted even though I was advised that I would be - that was nearly a month ago. Then when I complained about it I was told they would ring today. Guess what - no phone call. It beggers belief. It really does:mad:

Catwoman8950

For what it's worth, Wolstenholmes is now in Administration. I guess the Administrators will have a really hard job on their hands to untangle the financial mess :eek:

Source: London Gazette

Date: 17 February 2010
Issue Number: 59337 Page number: 2702 Publication Date: Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Notice Code: 2410
Appointment of Administrators
In the Manchester District Registry No 370 of 2010


WOLSTENHOLMES LLP
(Company Number OC320144)
Nature of Business: Law Firm.
Registered Office of Company: 277 Finney Lane, Heald Green, Cheshire SK8 3PX.




Date of Appointment: 9 February 2010.

Administrator's Name and Address: Stephen Berry (IP No 9605), Berry & Co, First Floor, Lloyds House, 18 Lloyd Street, Manchester M2 5WA.



(1046420)

mjmal51

anotherproblem wrote: »

Tripe absolute tripe - I have not been contacted even though I was advised that I would be - that was nearly a month ago. Then when I complained about it I was told they would ring today. Guess what - no phone call. It beggers belief. It really does:mad:

I agree, I have never been contacted, it has all been down to me to make the contacts and that is down to this forum. If not for the forum the SRA would not even have my claim yet. Even DWF did not make contact, I kept phoning them until my file was found.
When I contacted SRA in Dec they passed me to LCS who received my complaint and they said not to claim until I had completed the post completion work at my own expense.
As it is SRA have had my claim for over 3 weeks and although I phoned them they have not got round to a proper investigation yet.