Solicitor's Regulatory Authority continue investigation into Mswarts

The Prankster has been forwarded the following email from a number of different sources, and therefore believes it to be correct.

Dear sir / madam Please accept my apologies for the delay in providing feedback to you and also this format of doing so which is slightly unorthodox but is due to the large number of reports the Solicitors Regulation Authority has received about these circumstances. A number of individuals have received claim forms issued by Debt Enforcement & Action Ltd and signed by “M Shwarts, solicitor”. Upon making enquiries as to the identity of “M Shwarts”, you have been informed that there was not a solicitor on the Roll of England & Wales of this name. I can confirm that enquiries have been ongoing to establish whether the “M. SHWARTS” noted on the court application documents is a solicitor or not as there are several qualified solicitors of the name ‘M Schwartz’ (and other slight variations of spelling) that could be employed or instructed by Debt Enforcement & Action Ltd. In the first instance the enquiries were to establish if the spelling on the claim forms is the correct spelling of the solicitor’s name or whether it is a misspelling that has been repeated by the use of a template document. These enquiries were crucial as I needed to establish whether this matter should be dealt with under the Solicitors Code of Conduct (if the individual is a solicitor) or whether the matter should be treated as a criminal investigation under Solicitors Act 1974 ss. 20-21 and s.24 or s.14 Legal Services Act 2007. I can now confirm that I received a response from Civil Enforcement Ltd, the parent company of Debt Enforcement & Action Ltd, which confirmed that the solicitor in question is Michael SCHWARTZ, SRA id 118966. I can confirm that this person is a solicitor currently on the Roll of Solicitors of England & Wales and does hold a current Practising Certificate. Furthermore Civil Enforcement Ltd has informed me that they have written to the Court informing them that there was a spelling error on the claims documents issued by referring to the solicitor as “SHWARTS”. As such I will be today referring the reports that the SRA has received regarding these issued claim forms for consideration of any breaches of the SRA Code of Conduct.
I hope you find this update informative. Should you have any additional enquiries in relation to this matter, please do not hesitate to email report@sra.org.uk.

Prankster Note

It is interesting that Civil Enforcement Ltd have confirmed they are the parent company of  DEAL. This releationship was always suspected, but it is useful to have it confirmed.

The Prankster suggests that anyone with any further information for the SRA to investigate gets in touch at the email address supplied. The SRA might want to investigate

• whether Mr Schwartz actually invoiced DEAL £50 as claimed
• why Mr Schwartz is claiming any monies were owed to CEL when the contract with the Co-op is with Creative
• why the claim form states that the Co-op were aware that the debt had been reassigned to DEAL when the Co-op state they were not aware
• why Mr Schwartz is claiming the full charge is owed to DEAL when they were only assigned 87.5% of the debt
• why the claim as to the nature of the contract is not consistent with signage in place at the time of the event all the car parks car parks
• why Mr Schwartz has no idea if the charge is for trespass, breach of contract or contractual charge
• why Mr Schwartz is claiming the charge might be for trespass when CEL are not the landowner and therefore have no standing