A woman who falsely claimed a medical degree worked as a psychiatrist for more than 20 years in the UK. Zholia Alemi "had the power to detain mental health patients against their will", reports the BBC, but now she's been rumbled and it is her who is detained.
At the sentencing hearing Judge Hilary Manley called for an inquiry to be held into how the General Medical Council (GMC) registered her as a doctor, when the documents she submitted in 1995 were "clearly false". Alemi studied to be a doctor in New Zealand in the early 1990s but did not finish her course, however she managed to work as a consultant clinical psychiatrist. In 1995 she forged a degree certificate and a letter of verification – with the word verify misspelt, the court heard.
The documents were finally checked–presumably requiring someone to pick up a phone and everything–because she was also defrauding patients and got caught attempting to forge a will.
