A judge today slated the General Medical Council (GMC) for an “abject failure of scrutiny” after a bogus psychiatrist who submitted “clearly false documents” was able to practise for more than 20 years.
Zholia Alemi worked across the UK including in Western Health Trust, but was jailed on Tuesday for seven years at Manchester Crown Court on Tuesday for 20 fraud offences.
The court heard how a police search of a home in Omagh, Co Tyrone was a key part of the probe that would lift the lid on her life of lies.
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She claimed to have qualified at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, but earlier this month a jury found her guilty of forging the degree certificate and letter of verification she used to register with the GMC in 1995.
Sentencing her on Tuesday, Judge Hilary Manley said the offences “strike so very deeply at the heart of healthcare provisions in this country”.
She added: “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.”
The judge 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 in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, 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 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.
Mr Stables said court proceedings had “come about as a direct result of the persistence of Mr Coleman’s investigative journalism”.
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.
Una Lane, director of registration and revalidation at the GMC, said: “We are very sorry that Zholia Alemi was able to join our medical register in the 1990s, based on fraudulent documentation, and for any risk arising to patients as a result.
“Our processes are far stronger now, with rigorous testing in place to make sure those joining the register are fit to work in the UK.
“It is clear that in this case the steps taken almost three decades ago were inadequate. We are confident that, 27 years on, our systems are robust.
“Patients deserve good care from appropriately qualified professionals and place a great deal of trust in doctors. To exploit that trust and the respected name of the profession is abhorrent.”
Speaking outside court, Detective Superintendent Matt Scott of Cumbria Police said: “We conducted search warrants in a number of properties, but predominantly in Northern Ireland at Alemi’s home address. What we found there was what I would describe as a treasure trove in terms of the investigation.
“There was what are now proven to be false certificates; there was what I’d describe as a forger’s kit with transfer letters, blank certificates of qualification that basically you could put almost anything you want on there, really.”
That was all located at that address along with thousands and thousands of other documents, letters, a number of which were false. So that really kick-started the investigation in terms of getting towards a prosecution.”
The court heard that it was in 2019 that police searched a home owned by Alemi in Omagh, Co Tyrone and discovered a briefcase in a cupboard under the stairs containing part of a “forger’s kit”, including dry transfer letters from WHSmith and documents which were ‘practice versions’ of a forged certificate.
DS Scott said Alemi denied wrongdoing throughout and was “obstructive”, “difficult to deal with”, and, on occasion, “arrogant” while being interviewed.
“My view, and it’s my own personal view, is that Alemi’s lived a lie since she left Iran, where she originally came from,” he said.
“I also think that to get to the bottom of somebody who’s lived a lie for their entire life may be near impossible, especially when – again in my personal view – Alemi is somebody who has come to believe her own lie and has lived that lie for so long.
“What we can say for the moment is the moment she left Auckland to come to the UK, that’s when the lie began. She’d failed when she came to the UK and everything after that has been entirely untrue.”
Giving evidence, Alemi said she and her family were tortured in Iran before she fled to New Zealand. Mr Scott said there was no evidence to support her claim.
He said the complex case, which involved the NHS, GMC, Royal College of Psychiatrists and the NHS Counter Fraud Authority, was a “once-in-a-career kind of investigation”.
He said: “I’ve dealt with a number of serious cases, I’ve never dealt with one like this before. I don’t think I’ll ever deal with one like this ever again.”
Police are understood to be beginning a process of applying to claw back some of the money she fraudulently earned.
Mr Scott said: “She lived a good lifestyle, as you’d expect from somebody in such a senior role and position of responsibility.
“So the next stage in what we want to do now is to make sure that all of those ill-gotten gains are taken from her and put back where they need to be.”
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