Top 10 worst cases of fraud - part 2
6. CANCER DRUGS COUNTERFEITED
Early in September, 2007 police and justice ministry officials, together with government pharmacy supervision specialists, searched 66 private homes, offices and businesses in several German federal states and Switzerland. They were looking for counterfeit cancer medication called cytostatics, produced abroad. The imported fakes were meant to be sold at the standard, expensive rates with German health insurers picking up the bill. The damage to patients was very serious and the German healthcare system lost many millions of Euros. “We believe the case clearly shows that counterfeit drugs are no longer limited to the Internet,” said Klaus Altmann from insurer AOK in Lower Saxony. “They have arrived on the shelves of your neighbourhood pharmacy.
7. DRUG COMPANIES ALLEGED TO HAVE RIGGED PRICES AND SUPPLY
In the UK, the NHS's Project Holbein culminated in a civil legal case in 2008 concerning a number of drug companies that were alleged to have formed a cartel to fix the supply and price of vital drugs such as warfarin and penicillin. The price of some drugs rose by more than 700% in less than a year. Fraud was never proven but the companies concerned paid back tens of millions of pounds to the NHS.
8. THE ‘WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE DENTIST?'
A UK dentist who won £64,000 on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was found to have cheated the UK's Health Service out of nearly £500,000. In October 2002, he won through to the hot seat of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and went on to scoop £64,000 after answering that Xerxes was the King of Persia. David Heppleston, 45, was jailed for four years after pleading guilty to one of the worst cases of NHS fraud in history - in which he created 800 'ghost' patients. He admitted 100 charges totalling £448,021, with the offences carried out over eight-and-a-half years.
9. CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER DEFRAUDS NZ$17 MILLION
Two men were found guilty of defrauding New Zealand's Otago District Health Board of almost $17 million. Michael Swann 47, the board's former Chief Information Officer, and Kerry Harford, 48, a Queenstown surveyor, used 198 invoices from Sonnford Solutions, a company formed by Harford, to charge the board $16.9 million for IT-related services that were never provided. The prosecution said that Swann received just over $15 million in six years, while the board was paying him an annual salary of $145,000 in his role as head of IT. Swann was sentenced to nine years and six months, while Harford was jailed for four years and three months.
10. UK WOMAN USES 40 IDENTITIES AND VISITS OVER 200 SURGERIES TO OBTAIN DRUGS
A woman from the UK used over 40 identities to obtain drugs from GPs. She registered with numerous GPs, between November 2004 and January 2006, seeking prescriptions for the painkiller Co-Dydramol. She visited over 200 surgeries and moved around the country whenever she thought the Counter Fraud Service had caught up with her. The case came to light when police searched her home on an unrelated matter and found a number of repeat prescriptions, new patient letters and numerous appointment cards in different names. She pleaded guilty to 12 charges of deception, with another 30 counts taken into consideration.
