A bogus psychiatrist has been jailed for fraud after a court heart she was able to practice for two decades - pocketing £1m in NHS wages.
Zholia Alemi treated patients for 20 years despite having no real qualifications in her specific field, with a court hearing she submitted false documents.
She was jailed for seven years at Manchester crown court on Tuesday, as it was heard her "deliberate dishonesty" didn't come to light until she was investigated by a journalist rather than the police.
The General Medical Council meanwhile also came under firing for its failure to carry out more stringent checks on the crook.
Alemi claimed to have a degree from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, but was found guilty earlier this month of forging the certificate and her letter of verification she used to register with the GMC in 1995.
A judge told Alemi her trickery struck "so very deeply at the heart of healthcare provisions in this country”.
Sentencing Alemi, Judge Hilary Manley said: “That the degree certificate and supporting letter were accepted by the GMC represents an abject failure of scrutiny.
“You benefited from that failure and of course from your own deliberate and calculated dishonesty.”
Alemi was investigated by journalist Phil Coleman, who began digging into her background finding she had never achieved the degree she claimed qualified her for the prestigious role.
Mr Coleman was prompted to look into her history after she was first jailed in 2018 for trying to forge the will and powers of attorney of an elderly patient.
Judge Manley meanwhile raised concerns about evidence from a GMC representative during the trial in which the court was told there was a high level of scrutiny of documents.
She said the court was “troubled” by the apparent contradiction over a statement from the GMC which said documents in the 1990s were not subject to the “rigorous scrutiny” now in place.
The judge called for the GMC to conduct a “thorough, open, transparent” inquiry into how the defendant was able to submit “such clearly false documents” and why it took a journalist rather than a professional governing body to uncover the truth.
Judge Manley said Alemi, who was able to detain patients against their will and prescribe powerful drugs, moved around the country to different posts to ensure “the finger of suspicion” did not point at her.
Christopher Stables KC, prosecuting, said 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.
In 1995, she was in the UK where she forged a degree certificate and letter of verification, he said.
Mr Stables said: “Those forged documents were used by the defendant and sent to the GMC in the UK in support of her application for registration as a doctor.”
The court heard she was registered and worked “more or less continuously” for both NHS trusts and private providers across the UK, earning an estimated £1.3 million.
Mr Stables, who described Alemi as an “accomplished forger”, said it was unclear how old Alemi was as documents had three different dates of birth for her, ranging from 55 to 60.
The court heard she was convicted at Carlisle crown court in 2018 for three fraud offences and a count of theft in relation to the attempted power of attorney forgery.
Alemi was told by the judge to stop raising her hand to attract her barristers’ attention during the sentencing hearing.
Francis Fitzgibbons KC, defending, said: “Prison for someone with her characteristics is particularly onerous.”
Alemi, of Plumbe Street in Burnley, was convicted of 13 counts of fraud, three counts of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, two counts of forgery and two counts of using a false instrument after a four-week trial.
