Ghanaian nurse in massive fraud is working at hospital near you

A Ghanaian midwife involved in a £200,000 housing scam has been allowed to stay in the profession.

Dorcas Appah falsely claimed emergency housing from Southwark Council in London for nine years.

A council worker was paid £2,500 and a fake Home Office letter was used to get a house for Appah and her two children, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard.

Appah was convicted of fraud by using a false instrument and obtaining property by deception at Woolwich Crown Court on January 30 last year.

She was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment suspended for two years, required to undertake 16 hours on a structured supervision programme and ordered to pay £1000 in court costs.

She was handed a five-year caution on her registration but she will face no further sanction after an NMC panel found no clinical failings as a midwife.

At the time of the offence Appah was living with her two children and was facing eviction when her former partner offered to assist in finding her housing.

A plan was hatched with an employee within Southwark Council who was paid £2,500 to process the housing application.

Appah, her former partner and her children were not entitled to assistance from the council.

By using a false Home Office document and a false emergency housing document Appah took a home from another individual who desperately needed it, the hearing was told.

The financial loss calculated by the council was valued at just under £200,000 over the 9-year period of the fraud.

Appah was arrested in 2013 and gave a no comment interview to the police.

She denied the charges at Woolwich Crown Court but found guilty and convicted on January 30 2015.

Appah told the NMC panel she had a Legal Aid bill of £7,000 she is paying back monthly.

She also said that she has already paid back £2,275 imposed by a Proceeds of Crime hearing.

Appah stated that she had no knowledge of the £2,500 payment to the council worker.

This was accepted by the jury at her trial, the hearing was told.

The initial fraud was before Appah started working as a midwife in the UK.

Southwark Council launched Operation Bronze in 2011 to tackle tenancy fraud in the borough.

Ibrahim Bundu, a former homeless housing caseworker, was previously jailed at Woolwich Crown Court for processing false homeless housing applications in return for backhanders.

He is currently serving a six-year sentence after failing to pay back the £100,000 ordered by the courts.

Earlier this year Southwark housing officer Trudy Ali-Balogan was sentenced to five years in prison for taking £2,000 backhanders for approving bogus applications.

The frauds cost the council around £2.4m and left genuine homeless people without a roof above their heads.

The NMC found Appah’s fitness to practice impaired by reason of her conviction but decided that she should remain on the midwife register.

NMC panel chair William Nelson said: ‘This was a conviction for serious dishonesty reflected in the suspended custodial sentence.

‘The panel considered that your conviction involved dishonesty; however it balanced this against your personal circumstances at the time.

‘Despite your failings, your clinical competence has never been called into question.

‘The panel took the view that you are a committed midwife and considered that it would not be in the public interest to deprive the public of your clinical services.

‘The panel was also of the view that your dishonest conduct was a single occurrence and is not likely to be repeated.

‘However, the panel is of the view that it is necessary to mark the fact that your conviction was unacceptable and must not happen again.

‘The panel determined that a caution order was the appropriate and proportionate sanction in this case.’

The charges against Appah were found proved due to her conviction and she was given the maximum five–year caution order.

She is free to continue working as a midwife.