'Greedy' pharmacist who tippexed 1,500 prescriptions jailed for defrauding NHS
For six years, the "greedy" chemist billed the NHS up to 拢300 a time for dementia drugs that cost as little as 拢3.
Tuesday 22 October 2019 18:17, UK
A pharmacist who defrauded 拢76,000 from the National Health Service by using Tippex to alter prescriptions has been jailed for 16 months.
For six years, Michael Lloyd billed the NHS for expensive liquid dementia medication while dispensing the same drug in its cheaper, tablet form.
The judge at Cardiff Crown Court labelled 52-year-old Lloyd "greedy".
Some of the medication the chemist claimed for cost as little as £3, but he received up to £300 a time for the liquid form.
It included drugs like Alzheimer's medicines memantine and donepezil, which made up a third of the fraudulent prescriptions, and even basic painkillers and antibiotics.
Lloyd, co-director of Llanharan Pharmacy in Talbot Green, north of Cardiff, admitted to altering 1,500 prescriptions following an investigation by the NHS Counter Fraud Service (CFS) Wales.
Peter Donnison, prosecuting, said Lloyd's crimes were uncovered after local health board bosses noticed a significant rise in the budget for dementia drugs.
Mr Donnison said: "The differences in cost between tablets and liquid forms of drugs is substantial. The fraud is that he had prescribed the cheaper tablet form and then billed for liquid form."
Liquid forms are normally reserved for patients who have a gag reflex or for young children.
Prescriptions normally have QR codes which are scanned by pharmacists to prevent fraud, but Lloyd altered handwritten ones issued by staff at the nearby Royal Glamorgan Hospital, as well as retrospectively altering records of medicine given by his employees.
An investigation was launched into Lloyd and the pharmacy which he co-owns with his two brothers along with four other branches, and a year later it uncovered a total of 1,500 doctored prescriptions totalling £76,475.
Lloyd expressed "regret", but told police he "hadn't actually altered prescriptions, just endorsed them differently".
The father-of-three, from Penllyn, Cowbridge, admitted fraud by false representation and returned the money to the NHS with cash from his business, which the court heard he will have to pay back.
James Hartson, defending, described Lloyd as a "well-respected man", and admitted the motivation was financial and therefore "unfathomable".
His career, he said, was "crashing down as I speak in a most awful and public way".
Lloyd had been suspended from the profession for the last 21 months, he added.
Judge Neil Bidder said Lloyd had identified a "loophole" in the prescription system.
"The motivation here, and there is only one, is greed. I think it is inevitable you will never work as a pharmacist again. Your fall from grace is complete."