Friday, May 15, 2009

Lawyers fraudulent fee demands must be curbed by independent fee watchdog as culture of greed prohibits public access to justice

Law Society of ScotlandLaw Society of Scotland does little against fee fraud complaints.With the ongoing revelations from Westminster of a culture of greed revealed among politicians over their expenses claims, shamed into repayments only because of public naming & shaming by the media, calls are now growing for similar shaming of some of our notoriously if needlessly expensive legal firms, as the profession fails to deal with the issue of solicitors exorbitant & fraudulent fee demands to clients.

I reported on this issue in an earlier article here : Lawyers stealing from clients to earn 'double fees' while Law Society looks the other way in vast network of legal aid fraud & embezzlement

Basically, since competition in legal services has not existed in Scotland, ever, and the relevant legislation dating back to 1990 via Sections 25-29 of the Law Reform (Misc Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990, which would have enabled wider rights of audience in Scottish Courts was withheld from implementation for 17 years to March 2007, solicitors and legal firms have charged clients what they wanted, in an orgy of spiralling greed, rather than allowing market conditions and market competition to set the price of legal services in Scotland.

If for instance, a solicitor wants a second or third home, or a new car, up the costs to clients go, unchecked, and must be paid on threat of legal action or repossession of clients assets .. and solicitors seem to have as easy a time ramping up their bills and claiming expenses for anything they want, just as much as MPs at Westminster loading their expenses claims for everything under the sun, soaking the taxpayer for all they could get – and getting away with it until now.

Just as at Westminster, where the 'Fees Office' set the rules for Parliamentary expenses claims, providing MPs with a justification for their claims for cleaning the swimming pool, moat, or paying everything (including their mortgage allowance) on their second home which of course they must have as one of life's necessities, the Law Society used to set its Table of Fees, by which solicitors could refer back to as justification for supporting their extortionate bills to clients, despite the poor quality of legal work, and high case failure rate.

After the Table of Fees were withdrawn in 2005, legal firms decided themselves how to ramp up the costs of litigation, and up to sky high levels they went as bonuses, cars, new offices, and all manner of perks were paid for out of clients soaring legal bills, while case success rates and quality of legal services remained poor, generating record levels of consumer complaints to the Law Society of Scotland.

Advice from the Law Society's own website currently offers the following : "With the withdrawal of the Society’s Table of Fees, it will not be appropriate to refer to fees recommended by the Society. If, for example in executries, the file is to be feed by an external fee charger such as an Auditor or Law Accountant, the basis on which the external fee charger will be asked to fee up the file needs to be stated to the client needs to be included. If hourly rates are reviewed during the course of the work, the clients will need to be told about any increase or there is a risk that firms will be unable to charge the higher rate."

I can only describe that as hopeless. Clients are hardly ever if ever informed about changes in rates, until the fee demand arrives on their doorstep.

The Law Society's advice continues : "As well as the hourly rate any commission which will be charged on capital transactions or on the sale of a house would need to be included. In any matter where the account is being rendered on a detailed basis, the charges for letters, drafting papers, etc will need to be expressed as well as the hourly rate. They can be in a separate schedule referred to in the basic letter."

Again, this is pure fantasy from the Law Society.

On matters of Executries & deceased estates, the Law Society offers the following : "In executries where the only executors are solicitors in the firm, the information should be provided to the residuary beneficiaries, as they will be meeting the fees out of their shares of the residue. In other executries the information should be provided to the non solicitor executors. "

I have never encountered this taking place in an executry yet, and since the handling of wills & executries by Scottish legal firms seems to produce the highest levels of fraud & embezzlement I have ever seen, the only advice I could give to anyone trying to write a will is keep lawyers and accounts well away from your belongings, because whatever your bequests are in your will, they will never reach their intended beneficiaries in their entirety if a lawyer has anything to do with it.

Even some of the legal profession’s senior members now admit soaring fraud is common among members, as Richard Keen, the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, hinted in an earlier report I wrote here : Dean of faculty hints at rising fraud claims against solicitors as 'Penman Levy' bites hard into Scots law firms

In my experience of cases, clients who embarked on litigation often find their solicitors are content to write letter after letter to opposing legal teams, for no reason at all, other than to scoop up fees in some cases of £250+VAT for a single letter with four lines of text on it .. and several follow up letters which usually achieve nothing other than to inflate the solicitor's fee demand.

In one example of a case I heard of, there were 42 follow up letters at £150 each which totalled £6,300, with the case remaining unresolved after four years of letter writing and projected court costs of £10,000, all over a boundary fence misplaced by a galactic "5.2 inches" which the defenders in the action were at one stage willing to settle until their lawyer advised they should fight it out and continue sending costly replies to the pursuers costly enquiries.

Both legal firms in that case, in the Scottish Borders, have a good game of ping pong going - pursuers & defenders have paid over £10,000 each over a fence and a dispute, which might be settled quicker if wood worm eat the fence away, than if the two legal firms have their way.

Amazingly both those legal firms handle legal aid work too .. but I wonder, if they are so dishonest with their private clients, can they be trusted to receive public legal aid funds ?

We saw recently how the Law Society of Scotland protects legal aid fraudsters from criminal charges .. just to keep their members on the legal aid bandwagon, as I reported here : Law Society protects legal aid fraudster lawyers from criminal charges as SLAB nets £1.6 million ‘repayments’

The obvious conclusion from this is that solicitors who rip off their private clients, or are subject to complaints involving dodgy fee demands and other financial irregularities should not be allowed to claim legal aid fees.

In the past 12 months, many people have contacted me over their sudden receipt of huge fee demands from their solicitors, usually in the thousands of pounds, for as it usually turns out, non existent work allegedly undertaken two or more years ago, with little or no accounting of what that work actually entailed.

As an example, one demand sent to me by a worried client of an Edinburgh legal firm, who, among their case work, specialise in representing the Law Society of Scotland's Master Policy insurance, protecting crooked lawyers from negligence claims, threatened “legal action in seven days if an account of £23,000 was not paid immediately”. It was the first time the client had seen the bill, and notably there was no explanation of the work, no detailed breakdown, nothing at all to indicate what the solicitor had actually done, other than the words "working on a boundary dispute & drawing up letters".

The client contacted the legal firm, and pointed out they had ceased working on the boundary case in October 2006, due to settlement with the defenders, and that fees had been paid in full at the time, producing a receipt from the firm itself confirming that to be the case.

One of the senior partners of this legal firm then wrote back to the client, informing them "charges for work had been overlooked and not included in the fees at the time, and must now be paid or we will take legal action against you as intimated in our fee note."

The client returned to me, and I advised them to inform the legal firm they had passed on copies of the accounts to myself, and were going to call in the Police. Two days later, a letter arrived from the legal firm explaining "a clerical error had led to the fee note being issued, which has now been withdrawn."

However, not all cases of what can only be described as fraudulent fee demands, end up as easy to resolve as the above example, and, with the financial downturn affecting legal business significantly, I have noticed a huge upswing in legal firms bullying clients with demands for legal fees on work which simply never took place, and cannot be accounted for. When clients dare challenge these fee demands, the legal firm usually backs down, only after a threat of media exposure.

The legal services market, as it currently stands as a market monopoly controlled by the Law Society of Scotland and its members, cannot be trusted to set fees for legal services. These practices must end.

However, not only must it end, given the volume of complaints against fraudulent fee demands from the legal profession, there must be an independent fees commission to watch over the costs of legal services, ensuring access to justice is within the reach of everyone, not just the rich, or those the legal profession itself chooses to represent.

Given the high levels of fraud in solicitors fee demands, there must also be an independent inquiry into how far and how long this has been going on, with a view to the public being paid back money which has falsely been claimed by solicitors for work they never did, or legal services which were mishandled, either incompetently, or deliberately, just to inflate fee demands equating to a level of extortion over clients which cannot be allowed to go unchecked or unpunished.

33 comments:

  1. Looks like you have been busy.
    Anyone getting a bill in from their lawyers now needs their head looking if they don't question it after reading this !

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  2. Interesting post.
    I hope those people in the battle of the fence realise they are being played stupid by their lawyers !

    Lets hope the woodworm saves the day as you said !

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  3. £250+VAT per letter is a bit steep to put it mildly.

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  4. Hmm .. I wonder how many £23k clerical errors that firm has made.Disgrace.Fraud.Jail the lot.

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  5. I take it the slcc are doing nothing on this.Actually why does the slcc exist ? I don't see anything on its website to justify all that money spent on it if it wont tackle these kinds of issues.

    More cover ups but the Parliament in London didn't get away with it and I don't see why lawyers should be able to get away with it

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  6. Despicable that lawyers are allowed to do this but this all comes back to self regulation and just like the bloody banks they have done as they pleased.

    Lets chuck them all into the sea and start again!

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  7. "In one example of a case I heard of, there were 42 follow up letters at £150 each which totalled £6,300, with the case remaining unresolved after four years of letter writing and projected court costs of £10,000, all over a boundary fence misplaced by a galactic "5.2 inches" which the defenders in the action were at one stage willing to settle until their lawyer advised they should fight it out and continue sending costly replies to the pursuers costly enquiries."

    I hope the lawyers in this case get sent to hell but their clients must be stupid to have stood by while all this went on and at their cost !

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  8. Amazingly both those legal firms handle legal aid work too .. but I wonder, if they are so dishonest with their private clients, can they be trusted to receive public legal aid funds ?

    Good point.If the solicitors are robbing their clients they definitely should not be allowed anywhere near legal aid money.

    Keep up the good work Peter.Reading your blog gives me hope there are some honest people still around ! (definitely not honest lawyers though !)

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  9. A good reminder if one were needed to stay away from Scottish lawyers.
    Anyone stupid enough to get involved with lawyers like these deserve to be robbed blind because its well known these legal thugs will ruin their clients to increase their profits at the expense of justice.

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  10. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8052709.stm

    Allegations about MPs' allowances are to be examined by a panel of police officers and lawyers amid growing calls for action over the expenses scandal.

    Met officers and Crown Prosecution Service lawyers will look at complaints made against individual MPs to see if they merit a criminal investigation

    So lawyers will be giving a helping hand to the bent greedy crooked MPs who took as much as they could get and I bet nothing happens now the lawyers are involved.

    One more reason to dislike lawyers !

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  11. just remember that many of those mps who are fiddling their expenses are also lawyers or support or are supported by the legal profession in some way to get laws passed or blocked as the case may be

    dont believe anyone who says this whole expenses thing at westminster has just happened and the same goes for your story on lawyers fees

    lawyers are a business and all businesses thrive with political support so its time to hit back at those crooks who depend on their political friends to block reforms now their political friends are viewed as crooks too and that goes for scottish parliament as well as london and welsh assembley

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  12. Lawyers are nothing but money grabbing leech scum and this proves my point

    If ANYONE dared write 43 letters for me I'd be round to their office *************************************************************************************************************

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  13. I agree with you completely but don't forget - most of those MPs claiming on their expenses are either lawyers themselves or are in tow with the legal profession,which is why they have been able to get away with it for so long.

    If MPs are being forced to pay back their didgy claims then so should these thieving lawyers - especially the ones mentioned in your examples.

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  14. THOSE WHO REGULATE THEMSELVES, LOOK AFTER THEMSELVES. LAWYERS AND CRIMINALS ARE THE SAME.

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  15. People of Scotland, every lawyer you meet is a criminal, licensed to steal from you. You have been warned.

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  16. Law Society of Scotland does little against fee fraud complaints.With the ongoing revelations from Westminster of a culture of greed revealed among politicians over their expenses claims, shamed into repayments only because of public naming & shaming by the media, calls are now growing for similar shaming of some of our notoriously if needlessly expensive legal firms, as the profession fails to deal with the issue of solicitors exorbitant & fraudulent fee demands to clients.

    YES THIS IS WHAT WE MUST DO, WARN EACH OTHER ABOUT THESE LEGALIZED CRIMINALS.

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  17. Politicians say " I have not done anything wrong, I claimed expenses within the rules". Lawyers get Legal Aid money within the rules.
    There is no point changing the politicians by having a general election, or leaving the Scottish Legal Coverup Commission/Law Society in charge of complaints against lawyers. A totally independent system is what is required, and even that will need tight monitoring.
    We have political and legal rot, change the system. Our politicians do not want to be accountable to us (on either side of the border) and neither do lawyers, they are parasites, robbing their clients, and constituents.
    Remember Miss Blears, and many other MP's voted against the publication of MP's expenses, (imagine if they had got their way) crooks the lot of you, as unfolding events are showing. If the police investigate MP's expenses are we going to see another cash for honours whitewash, with a different name?
    I am trying to start working for myself and the jobcentre will not give me money for a waxing kit, costing £80.00. Note that Mr Gordon Brown, you want people back to work without support. But the Inland Revenue will want their slice of my earnings, like everyone else who works.
    It is totally unacceptable, how these criminals operate, if they are acting within the rules, the rules support MP's greed, and must be overhauled.
    Even Lord Archer, kept his title and he like Johnathan Aitken were jailed for perjury, crooked politicians. Hopefully we will see some prosecutions, of these MP's but somehow like cash for honours I doubt it.
    Finally, if readers are dealing with lawyers or have been stung before, KEEP YOUR DOCUMENTS. These will be crucial for naming and shaming these crooked parasites.

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  18. Gordon Brown has pledged a hard-line crackdown on expenses cheat ministers - warning any that were found guilty of rule breaches would be axed.

    HOW FAIR WILL THE INVESTIGATION BE MR BROWN? YOU ARE FIGHTING FOR YOUR POLITICAL SURVIVAL. YOU MAKE ME SICK, YOU WERE ALL QUITE HAPPY TO STOP FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LEGISLATION APPLYING TO THIS AREA.
    YOU ARE LIKE THE LAW SOCIETY, WANT TO OPERATE IN SECRET, BUT THE JOURNALISTS ARE ALL OVER YOU. STOP THE ABUSE OF PUBLIC MONEY AND APPLY FOI LEGISLATION TO THE LAW SOCIETY OF SCOTLAND.

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  19. I'm with everyone else.Get rid of these robbers and their politician friends who stopped any help to people they ripped off

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  20. LAWYERS ARE GOOD AT SENDING LETTERS, BUT USELESS AT PROGRESSING YOU CASE.
    LAWYERS ARE THICK, IF I WAS DOING WHAT THEY DO TO PEOPLE, I WOULD EXPECT A VISIT, JUST LIKE THE LAWYERS WHO ATTACKED MR CUMMINGS, BECAUSE HE MADE LIFE DIFFICULT FOR SOME LAWYERS. YOU ARE GRADUATE SCUM.

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  21. Parents who leave their kids are usually prosecuted, but not so if the parents are both doctors.
    Two tier justice in action, a construction labourer and his wife would be prosecuted.

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  22. Politicians say "We have done nothing wrong. We claimed within the rules".
    What this means is this, You taxpayers should not complain. We are robbing the public purse for everything, but IT IS WITHIN THE RULES, so it is legal.
    A general election is futile. Changing the monkeys in the cage will allow the new monkeys to exploit the expenses system so the rules need changing, not the politicians.

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  23. The Law Society, SLCC and The Third Reich have much in common. Too much power for the good of the people.

    Oh and doctors who leave their kids, blame the authorities for investigating them, WAKE UP you left them alone, I wonder what you would do to one of your patients who did this to their kids? Social Services perhaps?

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  24. The best comparison the Law Society could come up with, against an independent complaints sytem for lawyers, was to warn us that Scotland would be heading for dicatorship, Mugabe style, if lawyers were not able to regulte complaints against their colleagues. Mill continues his rant about Zimbabwe in his Herald interview ... "There is no modern democracy where the executive controls the legal profession," he warns. "That sort of thing is more likely to happen in a place such as Zimbabwe than in a modern democracy."
    Mill's fixation with this rather ill advised line, was also supported by of the 'guests' to a recent conference at the Law Society was the ex-head of Zimbabwe's Law Society .. testified as to his own experiences under Robert Mugabe, and that Scotland was heading into the same dictatorship if they forced solicitors to face an independent complaints system !
    I think most people seem to regard Douglas Mill's 'Zimbabwe defence" line now as being slightly over the top .. even some of Mill's stooges now balk at that arguement .. one of them who writes in the Scotsman privately calling him a "nutter" (how true) ... but as I have said before, cynically using the suffering of a people under a dictator to try to justify keeping a well known corrupt complaints sytem in place so that lawyers can cover up for lawyers .. is, to say the least, an astounding departure from common sense, but, quite indicative of the desperate tactics employed by Mill & his bunch to thwart any chance of reform to their cosy business model which has seen tens of thousands of clients ripped off over the years by Scotland's uncontrollable legal profession.
    -----------------------------------
    Douglas Mill you are a desperate man to come out with this diatribe. You are a nutter who's drive to maintain self regulation for lawyers is in conflict with common sense, if you have any. No doubt you would change the ECHR to the ECLR, European Convention On Lawyers Rights. I would rather have a European Convention on Clients Rights, because clients have NO RIGHTS AGAINST CORRUPT LAWYERS. Your desperation with the
    Zimbabwe defence arguement, shows you are like a man hanging off a cliff by your fingertips. A spell in a padded cell is what you need, then exchange that for one with a steel door. Adieu.

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  25. Give voters power to force polls'
    Last Updated: Sunday, 17 May 2009, 09:36 GMT- Search: Clegg Expenses AOL News.

    Voters should have the power to force by-elections to remove expense cheat MPs, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said.
    Mr Clegg said the public could not understand why MPs kept their jobs for doing things other workers would face the sack for and should be handed recall powers. WE DO UNDERSTAND MR CLEGG, THIS REMINDS US OF LAWYERS MR CLEGG, THEY KEEP THEIR JOBS WHEN THEY ARE DISHONEST, LOOK AT THE O'DONNELL CASE.
    DISHONEST MEDICS ALSO KEEP THEIR JOBS).
    "One of the reasons people are so angry about all these revelations about MPs' expenses is that they feel powerless (YES MR CLEGG JUST LIKE THE MANY VICTIMS OF CROOKED LAWYERS) and they now think MPs are going to act as judge and jury on their own failings," he said. (YES MR CLEGG, JUST LIKE THE LAW SOCIETY AND THE SCOTTISH LEGAL COVERUP COMMISSION, YOUR PROPOSALS SHOULD APPLY TO THE LEGAL PROFESSION TOO. SALMOND SHOULD BE IMPLEMENTING IT UP HERE. CLIENTS MUST HAVE INDEPENDENT COMPLAINTS HANDLING).
    "That's why I think that for those MPs who have clearly been shown, proved, to have done something wrong - particularly those that are then suspended in the House of Commons - there should be a mechanism where a small number of people in the constituency can say 'I don't want this MP to carry on'. (NO, NO, NO CHANGE THE RULES ON MP's CLAIMING EXPENSES NOT ONLY THE MP's. WHAT ABOUT PROSECUTIONS MR CLEGG? A MEMBER OF THE ELECTORATE WHO STEALS MONEY FACES THE FULL RATH OF THE COURTS? OH I FORGOT MP's WERE ACTING WITHIN THE RULES. MR CLEGG WHY WAIT UNTIL THIS SCANDAL TO VOICE YOUR OPINION ON MP's EXPENSES. I THINK YOU WOULD HAVE REMAINED SILENT ABOUT THIS IF THE FOI ACT DID NOT APPLY. I REST MY CASE).

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  26. Members of the public, when you go into a lawyers office remember you are sitting opposite a legalized criminal who can steal your money with impunity.
    To add insult to injury, the Law Society and Scottish Legal Complaints Commission will crush your complaints about your lawyer. Why, because both of these institutions have lawyers who will check your complaint and bury the evidence. You cannot get to court without a lawyer who is a paid up member of the Law Society.
    LAWYERS INVESTIGATING YOUR COMPLAINT MEANS NO JUSTICE FOR YOU.

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  27. Warning, stay away from Ross Harper Solicitors.

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  28. I received two demands from two seperate firms of Glasgow Solicitors this year - neither accompanied by an itemized invoice, contrary to Law Society Guidelines.

    Doubtless both firms were feeling the pinch of the reduced conveyancing and business market, and both failed to explain their exaggerated claims when challenged.

    One firm has failed to respond to written enquiries demanding an explanation - their previous corrrspondence had assured me that my 'account' was in credit to the tune of several hundred pounds - while the other, after threats of Court action, have belatedly settled for what they were origionally due (about a third of what they attempted to gain) without offering any explanation or apology.

    Bullies and crooks the lot of them, and why?, because they know that there is no meaningful or proper form of redress for clients via their cosy, self regulating profession.

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  29. Obviously a lot of people are not happy with their legal bills and no need to wonder why.
    I worked at a law firm for 8 years in the city and most of the accounts I saw sent out to clients were 'padded',some were outright fraud and most were complained against but little ever changed.

    You will probably have many from the legal profession up in arms over this but its the clients who should be more questioning of their solicitors work.

    Try publishing lots of legal bills to clients and see what happens to those firms business !

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  30. Bullies and crooks the lot of them, and why?, because they know that there is no meaningful or proper form of redress for clients via their cosy, self regulating profession. YES SPOT ON, CLIENTS CANNOT CHALLENGE THIS AS LAW SOCIETY/SLCC WILL TAKE LAW FIRMS SIDES ON THIS.

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  31. Please Mr Cherbi.I know you say you are not political but please stand to be an MP or MSP.

    We need the likes of you in Parliament.

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  32. Try publishing lots of legal bills to clients and see what happens to those firms business ! BRILLIANT IDEA, EXPOSE THEM FOR THE GREEDY RATS THAT THEY ARE.

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  33. I second the comment at 145pm

    Get yourself into politics !
    We need people like you more than the crooked scum who are ripping us off !

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