Ex-IT manager stole over £800,000 from NHS belief

A outdated style senior IT manager at an Essex NHS belief has pleaded responsible to defrauding his employer out of more than £800,000

Alex Scroxton

Alex Scroxton,
Security Editor

Printed: 01 Jun 2021 10: 52

A outdated style senior IT manager working at what used to be then the Mid Essex Health facility Belief (MEHT) has pleaded responsible to 2 charges of fraud by false representation and two charges of cheating the general public earnings after defrauding the NHS of end to £1m.

MEHT – which ran hospitals in Braintree, Chelmsford and Morden however has now been merged into the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Belief – used to be cheated out of a filled with £806,229.80 by Barry Stannard of Chelmsford, who used to be head of unified communications on the organisation.

Chelmsford Crown Court heard final week how Stannard, who as a band 8B senior manager used to be in a extremely trusted divulge at some stage within the NHS constructing, submitted a “nil return” declaration of pursuits create to MEHT while in actuality serving because the director of two corporations that obtained a large quantity of cash from the belief between 2012 and 2019.

These corporations submitted hundreds of invoices to MEHT, taking into account rather modest sums, which intended Stannard used to be popular to set apart off price from the belief’s IT finances with out being checked. No companies and products or merchandise invoiced for had been ever offered to the NHS.

Stannard also charged for VAT on the invoices, which he by no procedure forwarded to HM Income & Customs, which accounted for £132,000 of his total features. The VAT registration number quoted on just some of the invoices used to be falsified, even supposing it related to a authentic firm.

Purple flags had been first raised when MEHT ran an facts-matching divulge on its payroll and accounts-payable facts alongside Companies Home facts. The investigation began first with forensic accountants at RSM, sooner than being escalated to a nationwide-stage probe performed by the NHS’s in-dwelling Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA).

NHSCFA has lately renewed its focal point on conditions of procurement fraud and is encouraging others to come forward to story suspicious assignment, either at its web divulge or by technique of phone on 0800 028 4060.

The unit covers a astronomical differ of commercial crimes under its definition of fraud, including cyber-enabled fraud, bribery, corruption, and other illegal assignment committed by a person or community to compose monetary or authentic form.

This has integrated acts such because the “introduction” of non-existent patients to compose extra resources or funding or persevering with to work while signed off as ill.

NHSCFA estimates that the NHS misplaced over £1bn to fraud at some stage within the 2018-19 monetary year, draining the properly being service of funds and impacting patient care.

Various most modern conditions of fraud handled by the unit embody the profitable prosecution of a Cardiff GP who funnelled stolen cheques into his bank myth, and submitted false claims for exaggerated hours and locum shifts that he did no longer work, to fund a essential gambling dependancy. This earned a two-year suspended sentence, given the mitigating conditions.

In one more most modern case, a monetary specialist who managed to abet down three concurrent monetary directorships at NHS trusts in Cheshire, Merseyside and Staffordshire – at one stage receiving a salary of £2,000 a day – used to be sentenced to 11 years and 5 months in detention center at Leeds Crown Court in April 2021.

Insist Continues Beneath