Alwyn O'Connor was struck off by the tribunal earlier this week.
Alwyn O'Connor was struck off by the tribunal earlier this week.
From ‘con-man’ to Elvis impersonator, inmate to lawyer: Alwyn O’Connor has worn as many hats as he has names. But how was a man with a raft of dishonesty convictions, and who spent time in prison for abusing a child, allowed to practise law in the first place? Jeremy Wilkinson investigates.
“A person who quite coolly and calmly goes around taking money from people ... I think I described you as a con-man and that indeed is what you have been.”
That’s how Judge Behrens described Alwyn O’Connor in 2005 before sentencing him to300 hours’ community work for nine dishonesty convictions. At the same time he warned him that any more similar offending would earn him a stint in prison.
Less than three years later O’Connor was behind bars for three charges of assaulting his then-partner’s 3-year-old son by flushing his head in a toilet and rubbing his face into carpet.
He also later pleaded guilty to wilful ill-treatment in relation to the same child where he admitted inserting office stationery items into the boy’s genitals, in what a judge would later describe as a “warped” form of punishment for the boy’s incontinence issues.
Seven years after serving more than a year in prison for that offending, he was a practising lawyer.
Now, experts are asking why the Law Society granted him a practising certificate at all.
Alwyn O'Connor was cross-examined in front of the tribunal in May. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
One of those is Ron Paterson, a former Health and Disability Commissioner, Ombudsman, law lecturer and the chairman of a panel that this year recommended the New Zealand Law Society relinquish its regulatory functions.
“It’s astonishing that he would able to be admitted with these kinds of convictions,” Paterson told the Weekend Herald.
“It’s very difficult to see how someone with that kind of criminal record could be regarded as fit to practise.”
Paterson said O’Connor’s child abuse convictions were bad enough on their own, but the raft of dishonesty convictions he had to his name would alone normally preclude a lawyer from gaining a practising certificate.
Paterson said in most cases the Law Society gets it right and lawyers wanting a practising certificate do receive the appropriate scrutiny.
“But this case appears to be a complete outlier,” he said.
“It’s simply extraordinary that he was admitted.”
He said there needed to be transparency about how it was that O’Connor was granted a certificate and the Law Society needed to explain how it had happened.
“The Practice Approval Committee makes people jump through so many hoops already, even when they have references.”
Paterson said there are numerous other cases where aspiring lawyers who had committed significantly more minor offences had been denied practising certificates.
He said the case most often cited was that of Wellington lawyer John Stanley, who took his fight to obtain a practising certificate all the way to the Supreme Court after the Law Society opposed him obtaining one on the basis of historical drink-driving convictions.
This year the Law Society opposed the practising certificate for Davina Reid, a lawyer who was struck off after attempting to smuggle a cellphone and cigarettes to her convicted murderer client-come-husband Liam Reid. They also opposed Christopher Twigley, a Tauranga lawyer who was struck off for embezzling thousands of dollars of his clients’ money to pay wages for his staff, being granted another practising certificate. Twigley will plead his case to be allowed to practise at the end of June.
In its decision to strike O’Connor from the Roll of Barristers, the tribunal said he had squandered his “golden opportunity” after promising the Practice Approval Committee that deemed him fit to practise that he would be the “cleanest most-professional lawyer”.
Ron Paterson says it's astonishing that O'Connor was admitted to the bar in the first place.
It said a number of senior barristers submitted character references on behalf of O’Connor and the committee made its decision “after lengthy and careful consideration” before granting him a certificate.
“The decision to certify Mr O’Connor was a compassionate one, which gave him a second chance at his life, the opportunity to prove that he had reformed, and to redeem himself by service to others,” the tribunal said.
“However, within 18 months of having persuaded the Law Society of his rehabilitation, Mr O’Connor began the offending, taking money from a client’s bank account, in respect of which he has been found guilty of misconduct.”
What O’Connor didn’t disclose to the Law Society before being admitted was that he’d been adjudicated bankrupt twice already. Bankruptcy normally precludes a lawyer from admission to the bar on the basis that they can’t be trusted to manage large sums of money for their clients if they cannot manage their own finances.
A spokesperson for the Law Society told the Weekend Herald the Practice Approval Committee was reassured by the supervision and protection provided by O’Connor’s offer of employment.
“It is clear that Mr O’Connor did not act in accordance with the assurances he provided the Practice Approval Committee when given this second chance. This is an extremely disappointing outcome.
“The Law Society expects all lawyers to act in accordance with their professional obligations so the public can have trust and confidence in the legal profession.”
The spokesperson noted that since 2019 all Practice Approval Committees have included non-lawyer members to provide a public perspective but said it would be reviewing its approach to aspiring lawyers having previous convictions.
A man of several names: Kingsbeer / O’Connor / Billington / Elvis
O’Connor is a man who’s gone by several names, including Elvis. Before becoming a lawyer it’s understood he had a side gig as an Elvis impersonator and was travelling as far as the Wairarapa to perform gigs dressed as the famous singer.
By the time he became a lawyer he’d been using other names, too.
According to the Law Society Review published in 2014, O’Connor was admitted under three different surnames names; Alwyn Kingsbeer, Kingsbeer-Billington and O’Connor.
His birth certificate, obtained by the Herald, shows he was christened Alwyn Kingsbeer but took his wife’s surname of O’Connor when they married in 2008, shortly after he was released from prison after being convicted of assault.
O’Connor did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article but said in a statement last year when confronted about his historical offending that he maintained his innocence.
O'Connor ran a side gig as an Elvis impersonator in the early 2000s.
That’s despite court documents recently released to the Herald that show he pleaded guilty to the facts of that offending against the 3-year-old.
“Often it is one’s backstory that makes someone’s journey interesting. I am proud of who I am today,” O’Connor said in that statement.
“It was that matter that was the catalyst for me to study law and help people in similar situations.”
According to the documents O’Connor - then going by the surname Kingsbeer - pleaded guilty to wilful and ill-treatment of a child relating to two incidents against his then-partner’s young child.
The charge covered two separate acts of “sticking a drawing pin into the head of his penis and secondly, inserting a pen into this boy’s anus”.
The Crown downgraded its initial charges of assault with a weapon and sexual violation on the basis that the offending was not sexually motivated but was rather a “warped form of discipline” arising from O’Connor’s frustration with the boy’s ability to use a toilet.
“It is submitted that what may well have happened was that the victim, in perceiving you as a father figure, may have thereby relapsed into incontinence,” Judge Barry said in his sentencing notes from 2008.
“That became intolerable both for his mother and for you and coupled with your lack of child caring skills you resorted to this violence.”
Three years earlier Judge Behrens, at the Porirua District Court, outlined O’Connor’s offending from 2004 and 2005 where he was convicted of a range of dishonesty offences.
Those offences consisted of manufacturing fictional documents to obtain a $10,000 loan to buy a jet boat, making up a fake reference to obtain a job and selling a bakery in Upper Hutt which he did not own - something the judge labelled as “mind boggling in its conception and simplicity”.
O’Connor even took the buyer to the bakery and stated “everything you see is yours” before selling it to him.
“You now say you feel badly about it. The thing that interests me, Mr Kingsbeer-Billington, is how is it that you feel badly about it now when you did not feel badly about it before you did it?” Judge Behrens said.
“It is that aspect of your character that really concerns me that you are prepared to in effect rob people quite coolly without considering the circumstances or the consequences.”
Judge Behrens also referenced convictions O’Connor had been sentenced for in the year 2000 for theft and credit by fraud and said that he simply took court sentences in his stride and they seemed to make no difference to him.
O’Connor disclosed all of these convictions to the Law Society when he applied for a practising certificate and convinced them he was a fit and proper person capable of representing the legal profession.
However, 18 months after acquiring his certificate he was laying the groundwork to take advantage of another vulnerable person.
This time instead of a child it was his client.
Storm and the money-go-round
Wayne Coles only discovered that his lawyer and friend had used his bank account as his “own personal credit facility” when he got out of prison.
It wasn’t by any admission on O’Connor’s part that led to the discovery. Instead, it was Coles’ obsession to get his dog back from the person he’d been paying to look after the animal while he’d been behind bars.
That person didn’t want to give Storm the pitbull back so he enlisted the help of the Porirua Community Law Centre to help take his fight to the Disputes Tribunal.
After reviewing his bank records, they asked him who Alwyn O’Connor was and why he’d withdrawn $150,000 from his account. They also questioned why there was a further $25,000 missing in cash withdrawals that Coles couldn’t have made because he was locked up at the time.
Wayne Coles and his pitbull Storm. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
Lawyers at the centre laid a complaint to the Law Society which referred the matter to the police. However, a forensic accountant who looked at Coles’ bank records said that because O’Connor had put most of the money back there was no theft and that too much time had passed for them to review CCTV footage from the cash machines where the withdrawals had been made.
Police referred the matter back to the Law Society.
It was Coles’ case that then became the basis for O’Connor’s penalty hearing in May, where it was alleged that he’d breached a handwritten agreement for Coles to loan him $25,000 while he was still behind bars.
O’Connor withdrew lump sums of $1000 from his client’s account, sometimes up to $20,000 in a single day, in a process the standards committee prosecuting him described as using the account as if it were his own “personal credit facility”.
While Coles was locked up for more than two years, O’Connor would take up to $150,000 from the account and topped it back up each time his client came up for parole.
Days before he was finally released O’Connor deposited a lump sum of $70,000 into the account.
Another witness called before the tribunal described how O’Connor had represented her during her divorce and then asked to borrow $50,000 on the day she settled.
The woman agreed to lend him the money but he didn’t pay it back on time. When she demanded it be repaid it was done so in $1000 instalments on dates that match withdrawals from Coles’ account.
Nikki Pender on behalf of the standards committee described it as a “money-go-round” where O’Connor used one client’s bank account to repay his debts to the other.
In fact, O’Connor admitted that he lacked the financial means to pay the debts on his own.
Coles also said he’d entrusted his lawyer with access to his eftpos card and his bank account while he’d been locked up and that O’Connor was logically the only person who could have been responsible for the still-missing $25,000.
O’Connor strongly denied that this was his doing, but he was caught lying to the tribunal after he admitted he had purchased two shirts for Coles to wear to an upcoming court appearance.
This purchase was made with the eftpos card that O’Connor denied having access to.
It took the tribunal less than half an hour to find him guilty of misconduct, accuse him of lying and suspend him from practising immediately pending his official penalty.
The handwritten loan agreement which O'Connor breached by almost six times while Coles was in prison.
Strike-off from legal practice
On Tuesday O’Connor’s penalty was handed down in the form of a strike-off, meaning that he is no longer able to practise law.
As part of her submissions as to why O’Connor should be struck off, Pender raised his significant criminal history as proof that the Law Society trusted him once and within 18 months he was laying the groundwork to take advantage of Coles.
“He is not, and never was a fit person to be a member of the legal profession,” Pender told the tribunal last month.
While O’Connor can no longer practise as a lawyer in New Zealand, other legal experts are surprised that the Law Society admitted him in the first place.
A small sample of the comings and goings from Wayne Coles' account in the form of withdrawals made by his lawyer Alwyn O'Connor.
Julian Long, a barrister at the prestigious Shortland Chambers in Auckland, said the Law Society’s decision to grant O’Connor a practising certificate was a “fatal own goal”.
“It’s such a ball-drop it’s almost laughable,” he said.
Long also compared the case to that of John Stanley and said it was strange for them to take Stanley all the way to the Supreme Court but to let O’Connor through apparently without opposition.
“It just seems back to front to me. I mean, they take a guy with driving convictions all the way to the Supreme Court but they let this fella through?”
Long speculated that the Practice Approval Committee at the time O’Connor was granted a certificate may have been overworked or perhaps lacked the necessary peer review to identify a case that needed closer scrutiny.
“To me it’s pretty easy to tell that this was one of the hard ones that needed another look at.”
Long said that while the Law Society had scored an own goal on O’Connor’s case, it usually did a pretty good job at vetting aspiring lawyers.
“Just because the goalie has let one through his legs doesn’t mean he’s not fit to be goalie any more,” he said.
“But, I think people would expect an explanation about how this happened.”
O'Connor's bio on the Law Society website lists him as suspended. He has been officially struck off pending appeal. Photo / NZLS
In the last three years the tribunal has struck 12 lawyers from the Roll of Barristers and Solicitors and handed out 22 suspensions. It has also handed out 25 censures to legal practitioners as a warning against their conduct.
This year one of those struck from the roll was Neisha Holdaway, who failed to release the proceeds of a property sale to her client. The tribunal also elected to suspend former senior partner Dean Palmer for a drunken lunchtime trip to a sex shop with female interns.
Another lawyer dubbed “Mr Q” by the tribunal was suspended after drunkenly offering a female colleague the “best orgasm of your life” in the back of a taxi following a work function.
Justice Minister Kiri Allan said it wasn’t appropriate for her to comment on a specific case and she wasn’t directly involved with the Law Society granting practising certificates.
“I’m advised the admissions process considers whether a candidate is fit and proper. This includes consideration of any past convictions the candidate has and if so, whether the candidate has reformed,” she said in a statement.
“This may include considering the nature of the offending, how recently the offending occurred, the candidate’s conduct since the offending, whether the candidate has expressed remorse, and whether the candidate’s application has the support of other practitioners.”
Allan said she had met with the Law Society following an independent review into its function released this year that recommended it be stripped of its regulatory capabilities.
Coles told the Weekend Herald the tribunal’s decision was only partly vindicating after being told by the police that in their eyes, O’Connor hadn’t committed any theft and they wouldn’t be investigating the still-missing $25,000
“I don’t feel fully vindicated because justice has not been served,” he said.
He said there was “no way” he ever would have hired O’Connor if he’d known about his prior convictions and now that the tribunal has called him out for lying to them about the missing $25,000, he intends to take the matter back to the police.
He’s also calling for the Law Society to front up.
“The Law Society are yet to disclose the whole truth. There should be an inquiry about how he was able to practise law in the first place.
“I hold them personally responsible for what transpired. At the moment they are actually getting in the way of justice.”
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for the Herald since 2021.
