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A UK court sentenced Jignesh Patel and Rahil Patel to six years each for defrauding the NHS. The case exposed an international scheme that diverted vital healthcare funds for personal gain.
An Indian-origin pharmacist and his employee have each been sentenced to six years in prison for defrauding the UK's Health Service through false prescriptions worth more than £1.3 million, news agency Press Trust of India reported.
Jignesh Patel, 46, and Rahil Patel, 42, who are not related, obtained medicines using false prescriptions and sold them to pharmaceutical wholesalers in Europe. They were sentenced last week after a three-week trial at Southwark Crown Court, where both were found guilty of three counts of fraud by false representation and two counts of converting criminal property.
At the sentencing hearing last Friday, Justice Cole said: "This was committed out of greed and you were equal partners in the serious fraud designed to make you a lot of money." He added: "This was a thoroughly impressive investigation, expertly presented on all sides."
The NHS said investigators from the NHS Counter Fraud Authority will now use powers under the UK's Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to recover the lost funds.
"Jignesh Patel and Rahil Patel worked together for several years, obtaining drugs using false prescriptions and selling them on to European pharmaceutical wholesale businesses," Ben Harrison, head of operations and engagement at the authority, said, according to PTI.
"Our expert investigation team followed the evidence, both in the UK and Europe, to bring these individuals to justice. This case demonstrates that there is no hiding place for those who seek to defraud the NHS," he said.
Harrison added: "We will actively pursue any criminals that seek to defraud the NHS of vital funds and every pound stolen from the NHS is a pound that cannot be spent on frontline services, and the NHSCFA is committed to pursuing those responsible."
Jignesh Patel owned Wise Pharmacy in north London and a pharmaceutical wholesale business called Actipharm Limited. He came under the authority's scrutiny after his pharmacy dispensed expensive medicines that are normally issued only in hospitals.
After irregularities were found in prescription data, NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups obtained copies of the prescriptions and checked them with the general practitioners named on them. The checks found no records showing that the patients needed the medicines and confirmed that the doctors had not prescribed them.
Further inquiries identified seven expensive medicines dispensed by Wise Pharmacy that would not normally be expected in primary care: Sprycel, Noxafil, Atripla, Eviplera, Tobramycin, Truvada and Viread.
The authority obtained all prescriptions dispensed by the pharmacy between January 2015 and November 2017. It found 1,639 false prescriptions in the names of 24 doctors, covering 440 patients and 6,983 dispensed items. The doctors were interviewed and confirmed that they had not issued the prescriptions.
"The reimbursement value for the drugs listed on the false prescriptions paid by the NHS to Wise Pharmacy was in excess of £1.3 million," the authority said.
Evidence from European wholesalers was obtained through European Investigation Orders submitted by the UK's Crown Prosecution Service to prosecutors in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium in November 2018. In May 2019, the counter-fraud authority presented the investigation and its evidence requirements to German authorities at Eurojust in The Hague.
In March 2020, Danish police, assisted by the authority, visited a wholesaler in Copenhagen. The evidence linked medicines obtained by Wise Pharmacy through false prescriptions to their later sale by Actipharm to European wholesalers.
Jignesh Patel was arrested on December 6, 2017, and £190,000 in cash was seized during a search of his property.
The UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency requires pharmaceutical wholesale businesses such as Actipharm to employ a Responsible Person, who must ensure that the conditions of the company's licence are followed.
"At the time of these offences, the RPs for Actipharm were Jignesh Patel and Rahil Patel. As Responsible Persons for Actipharm Ltd, they were responsible for accurate record-keeping and had knowledge of where the pharmaceutical drugs were obtained from and which companies they were sold to," the counter-fraud authority said.
"The investigation established that Actipharm was selling Sprycel and Noxafil to other wholesale companies despite not having purchased them, meaning they could only have been obtained through Wise Pharmacy," it added.
Rahil Patel was interviewed under caution on February 14, 2020. Text messages between him and Jignesh Patel about the purchase of false prescriptions and medicines were presented as evidence at their trial, PTI reported.
The investigation found that the two men used 1,639 false prescriptions to obtain medicines reimbursed by the NHS for more than £1.3 million before selling the drugs through Actipharm to wholesalers in Europe. Both have been sentenced to six years in prison.
With PTI Inputs
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