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UK Against Fluoridation

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Dentist spared jail for NHS scam

Dentist spared jail for NHS scam
A dentist who swindled the NHS out of thousands of pounds has avoided jail. Inner London Crown Court heard Paul Browne, 38, filed hundreds of false invoices from his practice in Clapham, south London between 2000 and 2002. Browne, of Embankment, central London, was fined £12,500 and given 200 hours community service after admitting deception at the same court last month.
Judge Peter Grobel said: "It was a system that depended on trust and you abused that."

Fluoride treatments
Prosecutors said Browne was sentenced on the basis he made up to £17,500 from the fraud, but the true figure could have been much higher The court heard officials became suspicious when they noticed Browne was supposedly conducting 60 times more fluoride treatments than the national average. Investigators for the NHS Counter Fraud Service also found one of the patients he claimed to have worked on had been ill in hospital at the time. Browne pleaded guilty to 11 counts of obtaining money by deception.
After selling the Clapham practice in 2004 he now earns £90,000 a year running a practice on the King's Road in south-west London, The court heard he has already handed over a cheque for £40,000 as "compensation" for his actions.

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