Solicitor who impersonated police officer sentenced

A solicitor who impersonated a police officer to get hold of CCTV footage from a Nando’s restaurant has been sentenced.

At Leeds Magistrates’ Court yesterday, Conor Johnstone was handed a 12-month community order and ordered to complete 260 hours of supervised unpaid work.

Johnstone, from Altrincham, was found guilty following a one-day trial last month of one count of impersonating a police officer.

The court heard that in July last year, staff members at the Nando’s in Warrington received a phone call from a man claiming to be Police Constable Matthew Gregory from Cheshire Police’s Domestic Violence Unit. This man told staff he was investigating an incident involving a man and woman who had been in the restaurant the night before and that he needed CCTV footage of the pair.

Gregory was asked to sign a CCTV footage release form and provided the staff member with what appeared to be a Cheshire Police email address. The purported police officer asked for an urgent response and that the footage be sent to him as soon as possible.

A few days later, a second staff member reviewed the footage and tried to email Gregory to confirm that the couple were present in the restaurant. The emails were not delivered and after several attempts, the staff member called the police: they were informed that there was no such officer working with Cheshire Police.

Investigating officers found that the email address provided had been purchased on a temporary basis by Johnstone. The solicitor had entered his date of birth, phone number and address when he bought the domain, leading police straight to him.

It was later discovered that one of the people who had been dining in the Nando’s was known to Johnstone.

Detective Constable Darroch of the Protecting Vulnerable People Unit, said:

‘You do not have to be a solicitor to know that impersonating a police officer is a very serious offence, so Conor Johnstone will have been well aware that his actions were illegal. Under the guise of this persona, and armed with a false email that would have looked legitimate to the uninitiated, Johnstone took advantage of two employees who were simply looking to assist with what they thought was an official police investigation.’

Johnstone will now be subject to an investigation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. According to the SRA register, he was admitted to the roll in March 2016 and worked for a specialist criminal firm in the north-west.

Kindly shared by The Law Society Gazette image courtesy of Adobe