The original article can be found in: Metro UK By Tariq Tahir
A dentist conned the NHS out of £1.4million in one of the biggest fraud cases the health service has ever seen.
Dr Joyce Trail spent the cash on exotic holidays and designer shoes by pretending she had fitted dentures – including to more than 100 patients who were dead.
She submitted more than 7,000 dodgy invoices over three years for work she never carried out.The 50-year-old used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle, travelling to the Caribbean and shopping at Prada and Jimmy Choo.
Her daughter, Nyri Stirling, 33, who worked as an administrator at her mother’s practice, was also found guilty of conspiring to defraud the NHS.
The pair have been warned they face a ‘substantial’ prison sentence after being found guilty by a jury following a five-week trial at Birmingham crown court.
Speaking after the jury delivered its verdict, Judge Peter Carr told Trail: ‘You have effectively stolen a large amount of money that was not available to an already over-stretched health service.’Prosecutor Miranda Moore, QC, had earlier told the court Trail obtained lists of care home residents by offering to provide dental treatment.
She used the information to claim for bogus work on patients she had never met.
The fraud was detected when investigators ‘smelt a rat’ owing to the scale of claims being made.
Miss Moore added: ‘There were over 100 claims for fitting dentures for people who were dead at the times the claims were made. We are not suggesting she was fitting dentures to dead people but that she claimed she was.’
The fraud took place at Trail’s practice in Handsworth, Birmingham, between 2006 and 2009.A spokesman for NHS Birmingham and Solihull, the trust conned by Trail, said: ‘We are pleased with the outcome of the trial. Dr Trail’s NHS contract has been terminated.’
Trail, of Sutton Coldfield, and Stirling, of Oldbury, West Midlands, will be sentenced next month.
