A licensed conveyancer has been banned from practising by the Solicitors Regulation Authority after forging client signatures on a mortgage deed, falsifying an email purportedly from the clients and lying about the circumstances surrounding the case.
Tanya Khan, a licensed conveyancer at Mackrell Solicitors in Covent Garden at the time of the offences, also used her employee HM Land Registry portal access to carry out searches and make applications against property owned by her father, on behalf of her mother, without his or the firm’s knowledge or consent.
Khan was issued with a Section 43 order by the SRA, barring her from being employed by a regulated practice, and ordered to pay costs of £1,650. The SRA said it had found her conduct to be ‘dishonest’.
The conduct relates to several occasions between October 2022 and April 2023, when Khan – a former conveyancing assistant promoted to licensed conveyancer by the firm – was found to have falsified client signatures on a mortgage deed submitted to the Land Registry and signing to say that she had witnessed the signatures.
She subsequently misled the firm by claiming to have received an email from the clients containing a signed deed, falsifying an email supposedly from the clients attaching the deed, and falsely claiming that her supervisor had told her to create a mortgage deed that could be submitted to the Land Registry.
Khan, who was employed by Mackrell Solicitors between August 2021 and February 2024, also allocated Land Registry charges which misrepresented the clients to be charged, falsified an e-RX1, and filed a unilateral e-UN1 notice with HMLR when she had no authority to do so as she was no longer an employee of the firm.
‘Ms Khan’s conduct was serious and represents a risk that makes regulatory action via a section 43 order appropriate’, the SRA said.
“Ms Khan falsified documents and correspondence and sought to mislead the firm and HM Land Registry.”
