Latest news with #psychiatrist
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Fake doctor ordered to pay NHS £400k or face serving two extra years in prison
A bogus shrink has been ordered to pay back the NHS more than £400,000 or face two-and-a-half more years in prison. Zholia Alemi, 62, was jailed in February 2023 for seven years after she committed a string of fraud offences. Having forged her qualifications, she worked as psychiatrist on both sides of the Border earning up to £1.3million before she was caught. Alemi claimed to have a degree from the University of Auckland in New Zealand but a jury at Manchester Crown Court found her guilty of forging the degree certificate and letter of verification she used to register with the General Medical Council in 1995. She moved around the country to different posts for more than 20 years to ensure 'the finger of suspicion' did not point at her, the court heard. Alemi, from Burnley, Lancashire, worked 'more or less continuously' for NHS trusts and private providers across the UK in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This week a judge ordered her to pay £406,624 in compensation to the NHS or face more time in custody. Adrian Foster, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: 'We have robustly pursued the proceeds of crime with the NHS Counter Fraud Authority and have identified all the assets that she has available to pay her order. 'Alemi had little regard for patient welfare. She used forged New Zealand medical qualifications to obtain employment as an NHS psychiatrist for 20 years. 'In doing so, she must have treated hundreds of patients when she was unqualified to do so, potentially putting those patients at risk. 'Her fraudulent actions also enabled her to dishonestly earn income and benefits more than £1million, to which she was not entitled. She cheated the public purse and £406,624 will be paid in compensation to the NHS.' Alemi was convicted at Carlisle Crown Court in 2018 for three fraud offences and a count of theft after trying to forge the will and powers of attorney of an elderly patient. Following her conviction, a journalist made inquiries into Alemi's background and found she had never completed her qualification, the court was told. His inquiries led to Cumbria Police further probing Alemi's background. Alemi was born in Iran but in the early 1990s was in Auckland, but never completed her medical degree.
The Independent
2 days ago
- Business
- The Independent
Bogus doctor told to pay NHS more than £400,000 or face longer jail term
A bogus psychiatrist has been ordered to pay back the NHS more than £400,000 or face two-and-a-half more years in prison. Zholia Alemi, 62, was jailed in February 2023 for seven years after she committed a string of fraud offences. Alemi claimed to have qualified at the University of Auckland in New Zealand but a jury at Manchester Crown Court found her guilty of forging the degree certificate and letter of verification she used to register with the General Medical Council in 1995. She moved around the country to different posts for more than 20 years to ensure 'the finger of suspicion' did not point at her, the court heard. Alemi, from Burnley, Lancashire, worked 'more or less continuously' for NHS trusts and private providers across the UK in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, earning an estimated £1.3 million. This week a judge ordered her to pay £406,624 in compensation to the NHS or face more time in custody. Adrian Foster, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: 'We have robustly pursued the proceeds of crime with the NHS Counter Fraud Authority and have identified all the assets that she has available to pay her order. 'Alemi had little regard for patient welfare. She used forged New Zealand medical qualifications to obtain employment as an NHS psychiatrist for 20 years. In doing so, she must have treated hundreds of patients when she was unqualified to do so, potentially putting those patients at risk. 'Her fraudulent actions also enabled her to dishonestly earn income and benefits more than £1 million, to which she was not entitled. She cheated the public purse and £406,624 will be paid in compensation to the NHS.' Alemi was convicted at Carlisle Crown Court in 2018 for three fraud offences and a count of theft after trying to forge the will and powers of attorney of an elderly patient. Following her conviction, journalist Phil Coleman, chief reporter for Cumbrian Newspapers, made inquiries into Alemi's background and found she had never completed her qualification, the court was told. His inquiries led to Cumbria Police further probing Alemi's background. Alemi was born in Iran but in the early 1990s was in Auckland, where she failed to complete the bachelor of medicine, bachelor of surgery degree required to practise as a doctor and was refused permission to resit.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Fake psychiatrist must pay back £400k to NHS for ‘cheating the public'
A bogus psychiatrist has been ordered to pay back the NHS more than £400,000 or face two-and-a-half more years in prison. Zholia Alemi, 62, was jailed in February 2023 for seven years after she committed a series of fraud offences. Alemi claimed to have qualified at the University of Auckland in New Zealand but a jury at Manchester Crown Court found her guilty of forging the degree certificate and letter of verification she used to register with the General Medical Council in 1995. She moved around England to different posts for more than 20 years to ensure 'the finger of suspicion' did not point at her, the court heard. Alemi worked 'more or less continuously' for NHS trusts and private providers across the UK in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, earning an estimated £1.3 million. This week, a judge ordered her to pay £406,624 in compensation to the NHS or face more time in custody. 'Little regard for patient welfare' Adrian Foster, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: 'We have robustly pursued the proceeds of crime with the NHS Counter Fraud Authority and have identified all the assets that she has available to pay her order. 'Alemi had little regard for patient welfare. She used forged New Zealand medical qualifications to obtain employment as an NHS psychiatrist for 20 years. 'In doing so, she must have treated hundreds of patients when she was unqualified to do so, potentially putting those patients at risk. 'Her fraudulent actions also enabled her to dishonestly earn income and benefits of more than £1 million, to which she was not entitled. 'She cheated the public purse and £406,624 will be paid in compensation to the NHS.'
BBC News
2 days ago
- Health
- BBC News
NHS doctor who faked degree told to pay £400k or face more jail time
A woman who worked as an NHS psychiatrist for more than 20 years after she got the job with a fake qualification has been ordered to pay back more than £400,000 or face more jail Alemi, of Burnley, worked across the UK after forging a degree certificate from the University of Auckland in New 62-year-old denied 20 offences including forgery but was jailed for seven years after being convicted by jury at Manchester Crown Court in 2023.A Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) spokesman said she had been ordered by a judge to pay back £406,624 in compensation to the NHS or face two-and-a-half more years in prison after she "cheated the public purse". Alemi was born in Iran but in the early 1990s was in Auckland, where she failed to complete the bachelor of medicine, bachelor of surgery degree required to practise as a doctor and was refused permission to forged a degree certificate and a letter of verification in 1995, with the word verify misspelt, the court that they were both accepted as evidence by the General Medical Council (GMC) who registered her as a trial heard Alemi had earned more than £1.3m in wages from the NHS but the CPS said she never held the medical qualifications necessary to undertake these roles. 'Clearly false' Adrian Foster, of the CPS, said: "We have robustly pursued the proceeds of crime with NHS Counter Fraud Authority and have identified all the assets that she has available to pay her said: "Alemi had little regard for patient welfare. She used forged New Zealand medical qualifications to obtain employment as an NHS psychiatrist for 20 years. "In doing so, she must have treated hundreds of patients when she was unqualified to do so, potentially putting those patients at risk."At the sentencing hearing, Judge Hilary Manley called for an inquiry into how the GMC registered her as a doctor when the documents she submitted were "clearly false".The court was also told Alemi, who previously lived in High Harrington, Cumbria, had been jailed for five years after being convicted of three fraud offences in offences related to the forging of the will of an 84-year-old, which would have seen her inherit the woman's Keswick bungalow and £300, Alemi's 2018 conviction, the GMC apologised for its "inadequate" checks in the 1990s and began an urgent check of about 3,000 foreign doctors working in the UK. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
A Fresno mother shares her journey with schizophrenia advocacy
Editor's note: This op-ed contains mentions of suicide and mental illness. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. My son died of schizophrenia when he took his own life at the age of 32. I first heard that term 'schizophrenia' applied to my child when he was 22. A psychiatrist sat opposite me at a huge empty conference table and said the word. The effect was total shock. But also total bewilderment. I had considered myself an educated person, but that word, hanging in the air, was beyond my understanding. Where knowledge should have been I found only a blur of misconceptions and movie plots that led to one inevitable conclusion: I had caused this. The doctor did not seem to feel that an explanation was required, so I was left on my own to learn about serious mental illness, a category with a blurry definition. 'Serious mental illness' is something that families come to recognize as we meet with other families facing similar problems. Touch points in our shared stories include involuntary psychiatric holds, jail, homelessness, refusal to shower and, of course, refusal to take medications. We talk about the voices our loved ones hear, the signals they receive — from cars, or cats, or grocery carts. Strangeness becomes familiar. We begin to believe we can't be shocked. But I recently learned something that astonished me: An expert declare that more Americans have schizophrenia than have Type I diabetes. That sounded ridiculous, so I looked it up — and it's true. Johns Hopkins says that about 1% of the population has schizophrenia, while Type I diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is found in only 0.55% of the population. Odd, then, that there's so much research on diabetes, but so little on schizophrenia. Odd, too, that medical approaches are so different for the two illnesses. A diabetes diagnosis is likely to come with education, training and treatment, whereas a diagnosis of serious mental illness is a voyage into the abyss. There are medical and legal reasons for this discrepancy. In past eras, mothers were the single medically acknowledged cause of schizophrenia. So that's the medical precedent that may have led us here. On the legal side is patients'-rights legislation, well-intentioned law that can backfire for families like ours. A family member trying to get treatment for a loved one with serious mental illness — the way a family member of someone with Type I diabetes would seek access to insulin — will undoubtedly be frustrated. One of the hallmark symptoms of serious mental illness is anosognosia, the inability to understand that one is ill. Our loved ones with life-threatening illnesses are, by their own reckoning, not sick. Knowing themselves to be perfectly healthy, they logically refuse treatment. And this is where things get dicey, because this refusal is their legal right, even when it is clearly not in their best interest. They can be desperately ill but not meet the criteria for involuntary treatment. And there is nothing family members can do. Jerri Clark is a mother whose attempts to get treatment for her son were futile. As she has explained in advocating for changes to the law, 'my son met criteria for involuntary treatment the moment that he stepped off the roof of a hotel and plunged to his death.' Clark, now on staff at the Treatment Advocacy Center, is careful to use the wording 'no-fault diseases of the brain' when speaking of serious mental illness. 'No-fault' gets to a central problem in the world of serious mental illness, which is the impulse to blame someone — the patient, for exhibiting terrifying symptoms; the family, for having raised a person who now exhibits terrifying symptoms — for this disease. When they do consent to treatment, our loved ones are most often still being treated with drugs developed in the '50s. Research on serious mental illness is scant. John Snook, director of government relations at the National Association for Behavioral Healthcare, has warned about professional indifference to serious mental illness, despite alarming mortality rates. According to one study, the death rate among those with schizophrenia is four times higher than what is seen in the general population. Snook and other advocates have worked long but so far fruitlessly to get schizophrenia classified as a brain disease like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's instead of as a mental illness. 'The science is clear,' Snook says. 'It's a neurological condition.' Yes. It is. But treatment of our loved ones with serious mental illness does not yet reflect this reality. This neurological condition deserves research, understanding and treatment. Julia Copeland is a retired arts administrator who volunteers at her local National Alliance on Mental Illness office in Fresno.
