A ONCE-RESPECTED solicitor’s fall from grace was complete last night as he began a two-year jail term for swindling clients out of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Robert Alan Cutty, 63, misused about £300,000 of clients’ funds – including large sums from the estates of two people who had died – of which £140,000 he used to line his pockets.

The remainder he used in a bid to cover up previous illegal transactions, while working as a consultant solicitor at the Sunderland-based Harding, Swinburne, Jackson and Co.

Passing sentence at Newcastle Crown Court yesterday, Judge Michael Cartlidge said: “The defendant’s actions have damaged the firm in all sorts of ways, not only in the very large cost of extra insurance, but also the cost of investigating the fraud and damage to its reputation.”

Cutty, of Neville’s Cross Bank, Durham City, pleaded guilty at a previous hearing to five counts of fraud and four counts of obtaining money transfers by deception, dating back to 2003.

He also asked the court to take into account a further offence of dishonestly transferring funds from a post office account.

Michael Bunch, prosecuting, said the firm of lawyers discovered the discrepancies during Cutty’s absence through ill health, following a heart attack.

The court was told he defrauded a female client of £30,000 in October 2003, after taking £3,000 two months earlier.

In another transaction, in 2005, he obtained a money transfer for about £52,500 from the estate of a man by falsely claiming the money was for the beneficiaries of the family estate.

In the same year he pocketed about £57,500 from the estate of another woman. In some of the cases he was the executor of estate.

The court was told that Cutty had undergone aggressive chemotherapy to treat prostate cancer, which had been “contained for the timebeing”.