A psychiatrist was paid more than £1 million ($1.2m) by the National Health Service after forging a degree certificate and pretending to be a qualified doctor, a court has heard.
“Most accomplished fraudster” Zholia Alemi claimed to have qualified at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, a trial at Manchester Crown Court was told on Tuesday.
Ms Alemi denies 20 offences, including forgery and fraud.
“To put it bluntly, the defendant is a fraud," said prosecutor Christopher Stables, opening the case.
“While she held herself out as being a doctor, she was utterly unqualified to do so.”
Mr Stables said Ms Alemi forged a degree certificate and a letter of verification, which she sent to the General Medical Council in 1995 to become registered as a doctor in the UK.
“She is, say the prosecution, a most accomplished forger and fraudster, but has no qualification that would allow her to be called, or in any way to be properly regarded as, a doctor," Mr Stables told the jury.
The court heard that the defendant, who Mr Stables said was believed to be 60, worked in psychiatry and had a number of jobs at health bodies and trusts between 1998 and 2017.
“The events in this case span just a little over 20 years and many different jobs, quite literally the length and breadth of the country, were held by this defendant during this time," he said.
“A conservative estimate, and I stress a conservative estimate, as to the quantum — so the overall — amount of money fraudulently obtained by the defendant from the NHS is somewhere, the prosecution say, between £1 million and £1.3 million.”
Mr Stables said Ms Alemi was born in Tehran, Iran, but records showed she presented in New Zealand in 1986 and a year later married, giving her occupation as nurse.
By 1995, the court heard, she was living in the UK at an address in Winchester, Hampshire.
Ms Alemi joined the GMC medical register using the legitimate Commonwealth route, the jury was told.
“In this regard she completely deceived the GMC into accepting that she was a fully qualified doctor. to what her experience had been," Mr Stables said. “In fact, she never was.
“The evidence will show that in fact the defendant failed her medical exams and after a number of repeated attempts at resitting them was asked to withdraw from the medical faculty.
“Rather than passing her exams she in fact failed them, was asked to leave and was never qualified at all.”
He said a letter of verification sent to the GMC claimed to be from the “faculty registrar” and claimed she had completed six years of training with “satisfactory grade”.
Mr Stables said police searched a home owned by Ms Alemi in Omagh, Northern Ireland, and found a briefcase in an understairs cupboard containing part of a “forger’s kit”.
It included dry transfer letters and documents that he suggested were practice versions of a forged certificate.
The jury heard Ms Alemi’s case was that she was appropriately qualified and documents demonstrating her qualifications were genuine.
“That does not accord with the evidence you will hear," Mr Stables said.
Ms Alemi, of Plumbe Street, Burnley, denies 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.
The trial is expected to last four to five weeks.
