A NORTH LONDON pharmacist has been jailed for six years for using forged prescriptions to obtain costly hospital medicines on the NHS and selling them to wholesalers in Europe.
Jignesh Patel, 46, owns Wise Pharmacy on Fore Street, Edmonton. He was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Friday (16). Rahil Patel, 42, from east London, received the same sentence.
A jury convicted both men on October 6, after a three-week trial, of three counts of fraud by false representation and two counts of converting criminal property.
Sentencing them, 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.”
Between January 2015 and November 2017, Wise Pharmacy dispensed drugs against 1,639 false prescriptions. They were made out in the names of 24 GPs and 440 patients, and covered 6,983 items. None of the doctors had written them. The NHS paid the pharmacy more than £1.3 million for the medicines.
Data from four NHS areas threw up anomalies
The fraud came to light when prescribing data from four NHS areas threw up anomalies: Barnet, Enfield, Newham and Tower Hamlets. Health officials checked the prescriptions with the named GPs, found no record of any clinical need, and the doctors confirmed they had never prescribed the drugs.
Investigators found seven high-cost medicines that would normally be dispensed in hospitals, not by a high-street pharmacy. The largest losses involved Noxafil and Sprycel, which the NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) said are used to treat leukaemia and are tightly controlled.
Stolen NHS prescriptions
In June 2016, NHS England warned north London pharmacies that these drugs were unlikely to be needed outside hospital. It told pharmacists to check with the GP if they were handed such a prescription. After the alert, Wise Pharmacy stopped claiming reimbursement for Noxafil and Sprycel, but it carried on obtaining them using stolen NHS prescriptions.
The medicines were sold on through Actipharm Limited, a wholesale business also owned by Jignesh Patel. Both men were Actipharm’s Responsible Persons, the role the medicines regulator requires to make sure a wholesaler keeps accurate records.
Investigators found the company was selling Sprycel and Noxafil to other wholesalers without ever having bought them, which meant the drugs could only have come from Wise Pharmacy.
The trail led to buyers in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. Sales of the two drugs to the Netherlands and Germany alone came to £779,405.
The jury was shown text messages between the two men. “Get me the scripts from the scrip guys,” read one. Another asked: “U WANT MORE Sprycel N NOXA let me know asap”.
Jignesh Patel was arrested in December 2017, and £190,000 in cash was seized from his properties. Both men answered “no comment” when interviewed under caution.
Ben Harrison, head of operations and engagement at the NHSCFA, said investigators had “followed the evidence, both in the UK and Europe”. He added: “Every pound stolen from the NHS is a pound that cannot be spent on frontline services.”
