A former judge and his law firm assistant have been jailed for six years each after siphoning off almost £700,000 from clients to hide debts, pay for holidays in Barbados and bet on races at Cheltenham.

Simon Kenny, 60, who was a deputy district judge, and Emma Coates, 47, spent four years plundering cash from the accounts of CK Solicitors in Selsey, West Sussex. They had been lovers.



An accountant for the firm, Robert Foskett, later killed himself after discovering £300,000 was missing. He was initially misled to believe the funds had been sent abroad to protect deposits during the banking crisis.

Kenny used his share of the money to try to keep the company afloat, Southwark crown court was told, but Coates spent the proceeds on a lifestyle of “excess and extravagance”.

Kenny, of St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, and Coates, from Bognor Regis, West Sussex, were each sentenced to six years in prison for two counts of fraud.

“Mr Kenny’s fraud was to use the client money to keep the practice going from day to day when it was in reality insolvent,” the judge, Peter Testar, told the court. He stole £692,000 in total.

Kenny, who is originally from Australia, was removed as a judge in February 2014 following an investigation into his conduct as a solicitor. A statement by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office concluded that he had also “failed to keep the lord chief justice informed of these proceedings”.

Stephen Wedd, Kenny’s lawyer, said the case had left him “ruined in nearly every way”. The court also heard that once word got around at Wandsworth prison that Kenny was a former judge, he had to be moved to a protection wing.



Coates stole around £437,000, some of which was with Kenny, using the solicitors’ firm as a “personal piggy bank”.

Judge Testar said: “As far as she is concerned, I am entirely satisfied that she has an instinct for excess and extravagance.” In 2010 alone, she spent £27,000 partying in Barbados. She also went to Cheltenham races and paid for mortgages using the stolen money.

The judge added: “This was all money from CK Solicitors, which would not have been available if it had not been drawn directly or indirectly from the client account. If there was money there for the taking, in order to meet what she regarded as her needs, she took it.”



Coates was also said to have given the family of an elderly woman who died “spurious” answers over the whereabouts of her missing £85,000. The offence was committed while she was on bail.



Another associate of CK Solicitors, Stephen Hiseman, 60, was also sentenced for two separate frauds linked to the firm. Hiseman, who lives in both France and the United Statesand specialised in debt management, carried out work for CK and used their offices.



Despite having no legal qualifications, he convinced two clients he was a solicitor. He swindled one by telling him he had reduced a £36,000 debt over a car lease to £15,000 when the victim in fact owed just £10,000, before pocketing the extra £5,000 the man gave him.

The court heard the man eventually lost his house because of what the judge branded a “cheap, mean and nasty little fraud”. Hiseman was jailed for two and a half years.