A pharmacy owner and his employee were each sentenced to six years in prison for their role in a £1.3 million NHS prescription fraud.
The Southwark Crown Court on Friday (16) announced the sentence for Jignesh Patel, 46, who owns a pharmacy in London, and Rahil Patel, 42, after they were on 6 October found guilty of three counts of fraud by false representation and two counts of converting criminal property.
NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) investigators will now use their powers under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) to recover these lost funds.
Judge 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. This was a thoroughly impressive investigation, expertly presented on all sides.”
Jignesh Patel is a pharmacist and owns Wise Pharmacy in Edmonton, London. He also owns a pharmaceutical wholesale business Actipharm Limited, where Rahil worked as a Responsible Person.
The investigation concerned the dispensing of high-cost drugs, which are normally dispensed in a hospital environment, and payment for prescriptions originating from four NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) areas: Barnet, Enfield, Newham, and Tower Hamlets.
Fake prescriptions
The CCGs found anomalies in the prescribing data and they obtained prescription copies and checked them with the named GPs.
They found that there was no documentation to support the patients’ clinical need for the drugs and confirmed they had not been prescribed.
The Local Counter Fraud Specialist (LCFS) began investigation and found that seven high-cost medicines were being dispensed by Wise Pharmacy, which would not normally be expected in primary care.
The drugs were Sprycel, Noxafil, Atripla, Eviplera, Tobramycin, Truvada and Viread.
The NHSCFA obtained all the prescriptions dispensed by Wise Pharmacy for the period January 2015 to November 2017.
They identified 1,639 false prescriptions in the names of 24 GPs for 440 individual patients and 6,983 dispensed items.
The GPs named as prescribers 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.
Examination of the bank accounts of Wise Pharmacy and Actipharm Ltd identified a payment of £28,900 from an EU pharmaceutical wholesaler for Noxafil.
Further inquiries identified sales of drugs, including Noxafil and Sprycel, by Actipharm to pharmaceutical wholesalers in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany.
NHSCFA had approached the authorities concerned in these countries to obtain evidences and submitted it to the court.
Arrest and investigation
Jignesh Patel was arrested on 6 December 2017 and during a search of his properties the investigators seized £190,000 in cash.
As Responsible Person, Rahil was supposed to maintain records and keep tabs on the procurement and sale of pharmaceutical drugs.
The investigation established that Actipharm was selling Sprycel and Noxafil to wholesale companies despite not having purchased them. This implied they could only have been obtained through Wise Pharmacy.
A number of text messages between Rahil Patel and Jignesh Patel regarding the purchase of false prescriptions and drugs were found and formed part of the evidence at trial.
Ben Harrison, Head of Operations and Engagement at the NHS Counter Fraud Authority, said: "Jignesh Patel and Rahil Patel worked together for several years, obtaining drugs using false prescriptions and selling them on to European pharmaceutical wholesale businesses."
