Couple jailed for NHS fraud

A couple have been jailed for two years each for defrauding the NHS of ?300,000 by claiming bogus travel expenses.

Jason Jenkins, 34, and Jane McCormack, 28, were sentenced on Friday after they admitted obtaining property by deception between 30 August 2000 and 1 March 2003.

The pair, who were both unemployed, had cheated King's College Hospital, south London, of almost ?2,300 a week, Inner London Crown Court was told.

The fraud, which was prompted by an idea gleaned from a patient outside a clinic, carried on for almost three years.

It involved simply photocopying a King's College Hospital travel claim form and then submitting bogus forms every day of the week.

Jenkins, of Patmore Street, Wandsworth, south London, and McCormack, of Millfield, Ninfield, Battle, East Sussex, claimed they were visiting their four-year-old son Harry, who had jaundice.

Inner London Crown Court heard all they had to do was pocket the cash from "disinterested" staff.

The ruse, which began in August 2000, did not come to light until March this year, and then only because the pair parted company and Jenkins shopped McCormack.

When interviewed, Jenkins told police: "It is crazy when you think about it.

Drug habit

"Nobody asked any questions for that ridiculously large amount of money. Nobody batted an eyelid."

He said he had squandered most of his share on his drug habit, while McCormack spent money on her son and made frequent trips to see her family in Ireland.

Jenkins said he had decided to blow the whistle after McCormack left him for another man because he feared others might be recruited to the scam.

Deputy Circuit Judge Leo Charles QC said: "It shows a most determined and persistent attitude on behalf of each of you - and I treat you alike - to cheat and deprive that hospital of funds urgently required to look after sick people."

He said staff in the hospital's finance department had acted in a "most indolent, perhaps disinterested fashion, processing claim forms without looking at them, without considering them".

Jim Gee, chief executive of the NHS Counter Fraud Service, said after the sentencing: "It's shocking when fraud takes place on this scale and clearly every pound that's lost to fraud is a pound less that can be spent on patient care.

"In the last four years since October 1999, we've been putting in place a network of specialists across the NHS - 500 specialists - protecting the NHS's resources."

He said instructions had already been issued across the NHS for claim procedures to be changed so a fraud of this nature could not recur.