Nurse ran Botox business while getting sick pay
A NURSE ran a private Botox business while on sick leave for stress and being paid more than £11,000 in wages by the NHS.
Nicola Bevan, 43, told her bosses she would need to take an emergency leave of absence from her job as a registered community health nurse.
While continuing to receive her monthly wage, she was running her private business, Youthful You Wales in Pencoed, which offered anti-ageing products including Botox injections.
After Bevan’s line manager became suspicious, an investigation was launched by the NHS counter-fraud team which found evidence on social media that she was trading.
They also discovered she had been duplicating prescriptions in order to obtain medications from pharmacies to be used in treatments. She did this to circumvent a process which required an independent prescriber to sign the prescription after taking into account the patient’s medical history.
As well as avoiding paying fees to the independent prescriber, it was claimed Bevan put her patients at risk as they could have been given treatments that were dangerous for them.
A sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court heard Bevan, of Wimborne Road, Pencoed, was employed by the Swansea Bay University Health Board and had worked as a nurse for 11 years.
Prosecutor Carl Harrison said the Bevan signed a contract agreeing not to carry out private medical work without the permission of the health board.
Bevan remained on sick leave from December 2016 to June 2017, during which time she received £11,211 in wages. Since her conviction, she has fully repaid the amount she received during this period, the court heard.
With regards to the prescription fraud, the defendant had duplicated 15 prescriptions.
When confronted about her behaviour, Bevan denied she had been working but later admitted to running a business while on sick leave. She also initially claimed she believed prescriptions could be submitted twice to a pharmacy.
The defendant later pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud and one count of dishonestly failing to disclose information to make a gain for herself.
The court heard she had previous convictions for the possession and production of cannabis.
Defence barrister Lucy Crowther said her client will lose her home due to the financial consequences of her offending and, while she admitted the case crossed the custodial threshold, she asked the court to give her client a suspended sentence.
Sentencing, the Recorder of Cardiff Judge Eleri Rees said: “You were a community health nurse for 11 years and it really is quite astounding how there is not only this offending before me today but the production of cannabis. It’s a foolhardy way of acting when you have such qualifications to do something worthwhile in the community.
“While on bail for those offences, you compounded matters by starting to lie to your employers in setting up this business and to as a nurse disregard the most fundamental issue – the health and safety of your customers.”
Bevan was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment, suspended for 18 months. She was also ordered to carry out 200 hours’ unpaid work and to pay costs of £3,705.
After the case, NHS counter-fraud specialists said Bevan’s private cosmetic work earned her an additional £14,400 on top of her sick pay.