DT News - UK - British dentist sentenced for fraud

Dental Tribune International

Wed. 14 August 2013

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LONDON, UK: A dentist from London has been ordered to pay more than £100,000 in compensation to the NHS within six months. If he fails to pay, he will face a two-year prison sentence. Following an investigation by NHS Protect, the man received this sentence in January last year for inventing patients in order to claim back £109,000 for their treatment from the NHS.

In court, 43-year-old Young Jun Suh pleaded guilty to fraud and theft totalling £109,000. He had submitted false claims to NHS Dental Services, and deceived NHS patients into being treated and charged privately.

Of the hundreds of Suh’s payment claims analysed by NHS Protect investigators around half raised doubts. Pencil notes on the cards, made by Suh, signified dubious claims.

Most of the signatures on patient forms appeared to be from real patients but did not always match the name on the record card. Many forms had been altered using correcting fluid, disguising original details such as name and date of birth. On one card, the genuine surname “Raptopoulous” had been altered to “Laptopooloo”.

On some occasions, Suh had been asked to supply NHS Dental Services with patient record cards to support his claims for payment; however, what he provided was very limited and appeared to have been rewritten. In December 2004, when he was asked to provide additional record cards for further analysis, he produced only three cards, claiming that his practice in London’s Brixton district had recently been flooded and many cards had been destroyed. At the time, he was ordered to repay £30,000.

The issue of ghost patients came to light in 2005 through a phone call to NHS Protect’s Fraud and Corruption Reporting Line. A member of the public had received a patient questionnaire addressed to a woman she had never heard of; nor had she heard of Suh. The name proved to be the first of many ghost patients registered at Suh’s practice.

Suh was arrested in May 2007 when 15,000 patient record cards were seized in searches of his home and practice. Further discrepancies were discovered when a number of his patients were examined by NHS Protect’s expert dentist in October 2008.

The dentist was erased from the General Dental Council’s register on 15 December 2011.

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