• 7 years ago
• Posted in:Misc. non-violent offences, Theft/ Fraud/ Money laundering
• 0
• Author: melodie
• Tags: Aged 50-59, Alexandra MacRae, Convicted 1990s, Convicted 1997, Dundee, Female prison, Female victim, Gender issues cited as mitigation, HMP Aberdeen, Lenient sentence, Multiple victims, Offended 1996, Politician, Post-SRS, Post-transition, Repeat offender, Sandy MacRae, Scotland, SNP, Solicitor, Stephen Rae, Struck off, Tayside, Trans woman, Victim sex unknown, Vulnerable victim, Wig

Stephen Rae / Alexandra (aka Sandy) MacRae, a male who identifies as a trans woman, has twice been convicted of embezzling thousands of pounds from female clients of a Dundee law practice.

MacRae, then aged 55, was first discovered to have embezzled over £16,000 from a client in 1997, and given two years to pay back the sum as the sheriff “believed she faced physical danger in prison”. The court subsequently had no alternative but to impose a prison sentence in 1998 when MacRae failed to pay back the money stolen, and was therefore sentenced to 15 months at Dundee Sheriff Court. MacRae was the first transgender prisoner to be jailed with women after being housed at HMP Aberdeen (a men’s prison with a small women’s wing, formally known as  Craiginches Prison). MacRae was struck off by the Law Society of Scotland after the fraud was discovered.

In 2001, MacRae, aged 60, was convicted of embezzling nearly £100,000 from an elderly client. MacRae admitted stealing the money from the estate of an elderly woman between July 1990 and March 1997 while acting with a power of attorney when the client was in a nursing home. Despite the defence claiming MacRae’s first prison sentence was ‘a somewhat traumatic experience’, the judge said that ”Where embezzlement on this scale has occurred, a sentence of imprisonment is almost inevitable.” MacRae was jailed for three years.

Prior to the embezzlement convictions, MacRae was a rugby player in Stornoway and unsuccessfully stood four times as a parliamentary candidate for the Scottish National Party, both pre and post gender re-assignment surgery. Previously, Stephen Rae was legal and administration director of the Western Isles Council and then (as Alexandra MacRae) got a job at Inverness Council in 1979. Media coverage is available here and here indicating Rae/Macrae initially tried to maintain a charade that Stephen Rae and Alexandra MacRae were two different people.

Photo credit: Sunday Mail

Media reports

BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/162216.stm

Herald Scotland http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12349571.Lawyer_stole__16_000_from_clients_Prisons_face_dilemma_of_sex_change_embezzler/  archive

Herald Scotland http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12166462.Sex_change_lawyer_gets_three_years_Solicitor_begins_second_sentence_after_embezzling_almost__pounds__100_000_from_elderly_client/  archive

Sunday Mail archive

News of The World archive

Daily Record archive

Modern Ghana https://www.modernghana.com/news/16274/sex-change-lawyer-jailed-again.html  archive

The Scotsman (archived) https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-18662388.html