Waikato lawyer William Raymond Harris has been struck off the roll of barristers and solicitors after being found guilty on 20 charges of professional misconduct.
The verdicts followed a Law Practitioners' Disciplinary Tribunal hearing in Hamilton.
Harris, 57, has been a lawyer since December 1972.
Tribunal chairman John Rowan, QC, said yesterday that
Harris' actions were reprehensible.
Transactions he was involved with were "unscrupulous, deliberately confusing and doomed to failure".
"Our primary duty is to act for the protection of the public," said Mr Rowan. "Striking off is the appropriate remedy."
The tribunal last week heard evidence from a south Taranaki couple who had lost the home and land that had been in their family for seven generations.
Rubina Pine of Manaia said she and her husband, John, went to Harris' Cambridge practice in April 2001, believing they were borrowing money to refinance their home.
A year later the couple discovered they had sold their home to a convicted fraudster.
Papers they signed in Harris' offices, and another one signed in front of a second Cambridge lawyer, had authorised the sale.
A Hamilton solo mother said she trusted Harris and signed documents she did not understand.
Months later, she was told by another lawyer that the papers she signed were part of a scam and that her house in Cambridge had been sold without her knowledge, leaving her with nothing.
She now has nothing.
- NZPA
