Fake crash fraud-plot nurse gets struck off for a year

A NURSE who received more than £16,000 in an insurance payout after claiming she suffered injuries in a fictitious road accident has been struck off for a year.

NHS nurse Nicola Bartlett, 50, received a £16,764 insurance payout after plotting the bogus crash – but after the lie was exposed she was sacked from her job at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr in Hengoed, near Caerphilly.

Bartlett had claimed another driver ploughed into her car in Newport, writing off the vehicle and injuring her in 2010.

But police had already begun investigating the garage that wrote off her “damaged” vehicle.

The four-year “crash-for-cash” probe into Easifix garage in Newport, found it had helped stage 28 fraudulent crashes to collect payouts totalling £750,000 between 2009 and 2011.

The garage fraudsters were caught out by their own CCTV cameras showing a Land Rover being deliberately driven into a forklift truck.

Bartlett, of Bargoed, near Caerphilly, was charged with conspiracy to defraud and found guilty by a jury at Cardiff Crown Court in December 2015.

Judge Daniel Williams told her: “You lied to your insurers, and you persisted in those lies at trial. By then, of course, you were trapped in the lies that you had told before.

“You were unable to confront the truth because of the consequences to you and your career.”

After the trial Bartlett was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment suspended for two years, ordered to complete 250 hours of community service, and told to repay £1,350.

Hospital bosses sacked her for bringing her profession into disrepute. Since then she has worked as a care support worker in a private nursing home.

But a professional misconduct hearing in Cardiff was told earlier this month that Ms Bartlett plans to return to the nursing profession when her suspended prison term ends in January 2018.

In a letter to the Nursing and Midwifery Council, Ms Bartlett wrote: “I am fully aware and conscious of the seriousness a conviction has on the nursing profession.

“I am ashamed of the conviction before me which will stay on my record forever. Any future employer will know about this and I will need to explain myself.

“Upon reflection I have accepted responsibility for my actions and have developed a plan to ensure that I do not make similar poor decisions again.

“This conviction has had such an impact on my life and has also brought the nursing profession into disrepute.

“I agree that a nurse serving a sentence should not practise until the sentence is complete.

“However, once my sentence is complete I believe I possess a vast range of knowledge, skills and many positive qualities to offer the nursing profession, which is evidence in the numerous favourable supportive personal and professional character references.”

Panel chairman Paul Morris said Bartlett’s colleagues had written character references describing her as a “competent, dedicated and hardworking Emergency Nurse.”

Ms Bartlett was struck off for a year, banning her from working as a registered nurse until May 2018.