A woman who posed as a psychiatrist in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom for over two decades using a fake medical degree has been ordered to repay more than £400,000 or serve additional time in prison.
Zholia Alemi, 62, from Burnley, was found to have forged a medical degree certificate from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, which she used to gain employment across various NHS trusts in the UK.
Despite denying 20 charges, including forgery, she was convicted by a jury at Manchester Crown Court in 2023 and sentenced to seven years in prison.
According to the Crown Prosecution Service, a judge has now directed Alemi to return £406,624 to the NHS in compensation.
Failure to comply will result in an extra two-and-a-half-year prison term for what prosecutors described as cheating “the public purse.”
Originally from Iran, Alemi moved to Auckland in the early 1990s, where she failed to complete the medical degree required to practise.
The court heard she was denied a chance to resit, leading her to forge both a degree certificate and a verification letter in 1995. The letter, notably, contained a spelling error—“verify” was misspelt.
Despite this, both documents were accepted by the General Medical Council, which allowed her to register as a qualified doctor.
During the trial, it was revealed Alemi had earned more than £1.3 million from the NHS, despite lacking any legitimate medical qualifications for the roles she held.
Adrian Foster from the CPS said: “We have robustly pursued the proceeds of crime with NHS Counter Fraud Authority and have identified all the assets that she has available to pay her order.
“Alemi had little regard for patient welfare. She used forged New Zealand medical qualifications to obtain employment as an NHS psychiatrist for 20 years.
“In doing so, she must have treated hundreds of patients when she was unqualified to do so, potentially putting those patients at risk.”
Presiding judge Hilary Manley, during sentencing, urged an investigation into how Alemi was ever registered by the GMC, given that the documents she provided were “clearly false.”
The court also heard Alemi had previously been sentenced to five years in prison in 2018 after being convicted of three fraud-related offences.
The charges concerned the falsification of the will belonging to an 84-year-old woman, which, if successful, would have transferred ownership of her Keswick bungalow and £300,000 to the accused.
After Alemi was convicted in 2018, the General Medical Council issued an apology for its insufficient vetting procedures during the 1990s and promptly initiated a thorough review of approximately 3,000 overseas doctors practicing in the UK.
