De Souza/Clic Sargent/Ikem Saints and Scroungers

Here in the UK, we're lucky to have things like transport networks,

Legal Aid and free healthcare.

I'd like to think my taxes went to the NHS, to elderly people.

We are lucky to have the National Health.

When you are ill, they do come up trumps.

These services are mostly paid for by us,

the taxpayer, and, on the whole, we don't mind.

But what happens when someone tries to steal from the system?

It is a criminal offence.

I think that's wrong that doctors take money from the NHS,

because it's really the people who need it.

Ridiculous!

With the economy as tough as it is,

it's more important than ever that those who nick from the system

don't get away with it

and those who need help get it.

This is the world of Saints & Scroungers.

Coming up, the scroungers who are out to beat the system.

A fraudster who worked his way to the top of the NHS ranks,

swindling half a million pounds,

despite never having qualified as a doctor.

This is the kind of investigation we take extremely seriously,

because patient safety is at stake.

And we meet a family in need of help when their son is refused benefits

despite being diagnosed with cancer.

In the department's eyes, his care needs were not any greater

than any other nine-year-old.

We were flabbergasted.

The NHS is full of unsung heroes -

doctors, nurses, paramedics.

They train for years and work long, hard hours

to make sure we are safe and healthy.

And when we're in their hands,

we trust them completely.

But every so often, along comes a fraudster

who wants to take a short cut to the top.

Meet Conrad De Souza.

This man was put in a position of trust,

working within the top ranks of the NHS

to make decisions about care for heart disease and stroke patients

in southeast London.

So why in October 2011

was he put behind bars?

I've come to NHS Protect,

the department that tackles fraud and security in the health service,

to meet Sue Frith, who heads up national investigations.

OK, so let's talk about this guy.

What were the roles he was holding within the NHS?

He was a clinical director.

He was on a network for cardiac care

in the southeast.

It was a very responsible job and he was working with other clinicians

and making decisions, so although he wasn't clinically treating patients

and sitting with people as a GP would,

he was making decisions that affected people's healthcare

in that area of London.

So De Souza wasn't a doctor who would see patients directly,

but he had the power to make vital decisions about their healthcare.

Not unusual.

And he'd spent a decade working his way up the ranks to that position,

since first being hired by the NHS in 1999.

But a decade later, the CSA - the Child Support Agency -

suddenly cast a shadow of doubt over everything De Souza stood for.

I believe it was in 2010 when the Child Support Agency

had some concerns about him. They had their own inquiry.

During that inquiry, they brought up some facts

that they thought we'd be interested in in relation to Mr De Souza's qualifications.

The CSA was already investigating De Souza

at a former girlfriend's request

after he denied being the father of her baby.

Unbelievably, De Souza had provided someone else's DNA sample

in an effort to dodge maintenance payments for his own child.

Not great behaviour by anyone's standards.

But whilst the CSA were examining De Souza's personal affairs,

his professional life also became a real cause for concern.

The case was assigned to Dave Horsley

to fully investigate.

Once we got the allegation in

from the Child Support Agency,

we contacted Lewisham Primary Care Trust

to see what paperwork they had in relation to Conrad De Souza.

And that meant getting a copy of his application form and the CV.

Back in 2002,

De Souza had applied for a role as clinical advisor for coronary heart disease and stroke patients.

This is the CV that Conrad De Souza provided in support of his applications for employment.

And if we look at the form,

we can see that he claims first of all to have a BSc

from the University of Cambridge in biochemistry and chemistry

in 1987.

We made inquiries with the University of Cambridge

and established that not only does he not hold such a degree,

but he'd never actually studied there at all.

OK, so that's not sounding good.

But there was a whole list of other qualifications.

Presumably, De Souza had just made one silly mistake.

He then claims to have an MB BS,

which is a medical degree,

and we know from making enquiries with University College, London,

that he did study there for a short time,

but he didn't pass, he didn't qualify,

and therefore he doesn't hold that qualification.

Right, now the alarm bells really are ringing.

A top NHS advisor

who may not have any medical training at all.

Worrying that De Souza's CV might be a complete work of fiction,

Dave decided to check the number he'd given

as his entry on the General Medical Council's database.

All medical doctors in the UK have to be registered with the GMC

if they want to practise here.

We made those checks and found that the number is indeed genuine,

but the name allocated to that number was not Conrad De Souza

but another doctor with a similar name.

The true doctor who is registered with the General Medical Council

probably wouldn't have known.

So not only had De Souza lied about his qualifications,

he'd also stolen a legitimate doctor's identity,

cleverly allowing anyone who employed him

a means to check his false credentials

on the GMC register.

With these hooky credentials,

De Souza had successfully forged a lengthy clinical career.

As far back as 1999, he'd been employed by the NHS.

Admittedly, his first role didn't require medical qualifications,

but soon after that, he was applying for, and getting, jobs that did.

And in the decade that his work spanned,

he earned hundreds of thousands of pounds that you and I paid for

in taxes and National Insurance.

We found through talking to people

that Conrad De Souza had been describing himself

as a doctor for a very long time.

And certainly from 1999 onwards,

it would seem that he was starting to sign himself off as being a doctor

in communications that he was sending.

We already know that our conman had succeeded in pulling the wool over everyone's eyes

to get the 2002 job in Lewisham.

But three years later, he was at it again.

In 2005, Conrad De Souza applied for the job of Clinical Director

for the Cardiac Network, which is a role

not having contact with patients, but it was involved in setting strategy and policy

for cardiac care within the Lewisham and surrounding area.

That required him to have a clinical degree and clinical experience.

So although he didn't work face-to-face with patients,

De Souza did take on the responsibility

of deciding how people with very serious heart or stroke conditions would be cared for.

And it looked to the investigators that whether driven by greed or arrogance,

once he started lying, he just couldn't stop.

When we look at his work history,

he's claiming to currently hold the post

of a GP Principal in a five-partner practice in southeast London.

He says he runs the minor surgery unit there

and a monthly cardiovascular clinic.

Needless to say, he'd done nothing of the kind.

De Souza had invented his work at one GP practice

and then used headed paper from another

to invoice Lewisham PCT in 2005.

All a clever ruse to pretend that he was juggling GP duties

with his clinical director role.

OK, so he was billing you through a GP's practice.

Presumably, he was indicating that he was part of that practice.

Yes. And we spoke to the senior partners there,

who had no knowledge of him having worked there

or could give any explanation as to why payments were being made to him through the practice.

Unfortunately, the practice manager, who might have been able to help,

had since retired and we were unable to locate him.

You're starting to get a picture here.

You've got fake credentials, you've got him using a GP practice

of which he has no involvement at all

as a way to siphon the money back through to him.

-I mean, it's not looking good for him right now.

-No.

-No, it's not.

-In total, how much did De Souza take from the NHS?

It was close on half a million pounds

over the period of his employment.

-Which is how long?

-More or less ten years he was working for the primary care trust.

I mean, that's staggering, really - not just the sum of money

but the fact that he was able to get away with it for that long.

Can you work out how that happened?

We're told that he's a charismatic man.

We've asked managers at the primary care trust,

perhaps in hindsight, is there something they should have been aware of?

And they've struggled to come up with anything

that they can say, hand on heart, "Yes, we should have known".

He seemed to be very, very good at passing himself off as a credible doctor.

And De Souza was good.

Good to the tune of £477,000,

which he earned while pretending to be a doctor.

He had an enviable lifestyle

and part-owned three properties.

The taxpayer's money would have to be recouped

and put back in the NHS coffers,

so getting the case to court was a matter of urgency.

We had somebody who was allegedly purporting to be a doctor

when they weren't

and where patient safety could be a factor,

then those cases are treated with the utmost priority by NHS Protect

and consequently, this case was investigated immediately.

With the CVs and job applications he had,

Dave thought he could get the fake doctor struck off immediately,

but what he urgently needed was solid proof of De Souza's wrongdoing

to guarantee the clever conman's spot in front of a judge.

Later, the police raid De Souza's house and bring him in for questioning.

We'll find out if Dave uncovers the hard evidence he needs.

Right, let's put our scroungers up on the shelf for a while

and instead say hello to our saints -

the good men and women of this country who come to the help of those who really need assistance

but are too scared or unsure of how to find it.

Getting a diagnosis with the word "cancer" in it

is bad enough,

but when it's your child who's ill,

as a parent, it's your worst fears realised.

And it doesn't just impact on your child's life either.

Of course, it affects the whole family.

And life for the Duncan family in Fife

changed in 2009, when six-year-old Noah told his dad Aaron

that something was bothering him.

One Thursday afternoon when we were walking back home

from the shops just up the road,

he mentioned to me that, for whatever reason, he could see two buses.

That's when he told me that a friend at school

had poked him a bit in the eye.

And certainly his eye didn't appear to be

any major trauma or swelling.

He hadn't been complaining about it.

So, at the time,

we felt maybe it was just him being...you know...

something and nothing.

So, at first Noah and his dad thought little of it.

And when Aaron took his son to the GP a few days later,

the doctor also thought it was nothing a course of antibiotic drops wouldn't sort out.

But when things hadn't improved a week later,

Aaron's training as a nurse kicked in.

He knew they'd have to get Noah's eye checked again.

The GP sent them to a local hospital to see a specialist.

The consultant appeared

and he...

basically took five minutes of looking into Noah's eye

and he turned round to me and mentioned the words rhabdomyosarcoma.

Now, I'm a nurse

and I heard the word "sarcoma"

and suddenly my world changed from trauma to suddenly....cancer.

The diagnosis was of a cancer that was affecting the muscle

behind Noah's eye.

Although Aaron had plenty of experience of giving upsetting news to his patients,

he'd never been on the receiving end of anything like this.

Not only did he have to cope,

he had to find the strength to break the news to his wife.

I remember telling Brenda and she just burst into tears.

I was feeling confused.

I didn't know what was going to happen.

Kind of scared as well

at the same time. Confused and scared.

Noah was referred to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh.

The team there thought the diagnosis was correct,

but they needed to do a biopsy,

just to be sure how to treat the cancer with the right form of chemotherapy.

During that time... I think we're talking about a week,

ten days, something like that,

Noah's tumour started growing quite aggressively,

resulting in his eyeball protruding a lot more,

and he was actually unable to close his eye.

The doctors decided enough was enough

and took the decision to go ahead and treat Noah immediately.

Understandably, both parents wanted to be there for their son

and they also had their three-year-old daughter, Hannah, to take care of.

Going to work just wasn't an option.

I stopped doing my agency nursing, understandably,

and my wife Brenda was off work,

so at that point, we hadn't...

we hadn't thought about the financial issue,

because our main priority was what's going to happen to our child.

And the fear was that you could see the physical changes

which meant that the cancer, the tumour, was growing

and that's when you start thinking the worst.

That you might lose your son.

They were holding in the tears, if you know what I mean.

Just sad on the inside.

And worried...

about me passing away and...

all that kind of stuff.

Although times were tough, the Duncans knew they and the hospital

were giving their son the very best care.

And when the time came to give Noah his first round of chemo,

Aaron was right there with him.

I do remember at the time wearing a hoodie

and Noah...

Instead of going down on a trolley,

Noah wore my hoodie, which drowned him

and I actually carried him down

and I must confess

I've never felt so close to someone in my life.

He felt so vulnerable

and so scared

and I just tried to be his dad.

And thankfully, after a period of about a week or something like that,

his eye was beginning to go down.

The treatment did appear to be working.

It was during this first round of treatment that the hospital staff

put Aaron in touch with Clic Sargent,

a charity that supports families of children and young people with cancer.

We help families in three particular ways -

emotional, financial and practical help.

With emotional help, we'll be there for the family

right from the point of diagnosis,

right through to the point at the end of treatment.

For example, the family will be having to, in many cases,

make very long journeys to and from the hospital for the child's treatment.

So we've got some homes from home,

where the family of the child can stay in comfort, very close to the hospital.

For Aaron, that was the key.

The family needed somewhere to stay that was close enough to get to Noah

in a matter of minutes, day or night.

We were then introduced to Clic Villa,

which is a home from home, on the other side of the street from the hospital,

where we were given a room

and there was the chance to be close to your child

while they're on treatment.

The Clic Sargent team also wanted to help the Duncans get all the benefits

they were entitled to.

Their social worker advised the family to apply for Disability Living Allowance for Noah.

Thankfully, after a three-month wait,

the money came through.

The award was made for 18 months.

I think it was around £200, £300 a month.

For six months, Noah was in and out of hospital for chemotherapy.

And the benefits the family was receiving

helped them juggle the expenses of normal life

and hospital stays.

Thankfully, after 18 months,

Noah was in remission.

He went back to school. Aaron returned to nursing

and the family were glad they no longer needed the Disability Living Allowance.

The Duncan household returned to normal

for a while.

Because just as things were settling, their world was rocked again.

The doctor asked me if I'd noticed whether his eye

was protruding a little bit more than before.

I said no.

I knew something was wrong.

The cancer had come back. They didn't know why,

but what it did mean was that the only way they could remove the cancer

and basically save Noah's life

would be to surgically remove the tumour.

And because of where it was, again just behind the eye,

it meant he would be losing his eye.

After the operation, Noah had just two rounds of chemotherapy

before he was sent home.

Physically, the healing wasn't expected to take long,

but Noah had psychological scars

as well as his physical wound.

With neither parent being able to work,

the family decided to apply for Disability Living Allowance again.

And charity Clic Sargent introduced them to social worker Heather Wilson.

The DLA application form

is a lengthy form. I think it's possibly 30, 40 pages.

The larger section is actually the care needs,

and that will go through everything

from how many times a child needs help and encouragement and support

with their eating, with their washing, dressing,

all the practical things of daily life.

This time it was different,

because there was a lot more psychological aspects.

There was still the physical -

Noah had a dressing. He wasn't able to shower himself.

Had to keep the area dry.

You've got him getting annoyed at you

because you're taking some of his independence away,

because he's a nine-year-old kid now.

And then he was scared of you touching it,

and all of these things, so yeah, something as simple as putting a T-shirt on and off

was taking 10, 12 minutes.

And as well as considering the practicalities

of caring for his nine-year-old son,

Aaron realised Noah had huge emotional adjustments to make this time round.

He wasn't sleeping.

You'd send him to bed at nine o'clock

and you'd find him at midnight reading Harry Potter.

He was afraid to go to sleep,

because now at the age of nine, suddenly it wasn't just the change in the way he looked,

the loss of his eye,

or anything like that -

suddenly he was now thinking about his own mortality.

And he was scared. He was scared of dying.

Having been granted the Disability Living Allowance

the first time with no issues,

the Duncans had no reason for concern about their second application.

We got the letter from the DLA

and opened it up thinking,

here we go - it'll probably be like last time. We'll get the 18 months

and we'll carry on and that'll help us through,

but in the department's eyes, his care needs were not any greater than any other nine-year-old,

so in light of that, no award was made.

We were flabbergasted.

Heather advised the Duncans to appeal against the decision

and after a bit of toing and froing, they were invited

to a tribunal hearing.

The tribunal was January this year.

They were asking us questions about his mobility,

the fact that he'd required a wheelchair after surgery.

So it was really hard, because you were having to go back into a place

which you were trying to forget about

and a time you're trying to forget about,

but in the same respect, some things haven't changed,

like, psychologically, he was still finding it very difficult.

Within the space of five minutes, our representative

was called through

and she came back

and informed us that the original decision was going to be over-ruled.

We were really happy

that finally someone believed what we were saying about our son.

Noah is now doing well.

He's in remission and is waiting for a prosthetic eye to be made.

Noah is just absolutely amazing.

He's back into school and he's getting back into life

as much as he can.

For the Duncans, I think they're almost at the stage now where they're ready to move on.

We are stronger as a family. We're bigger than cancer. Cancer...

I think Noah once said about cancer,

"Beat it, cancer!"

I'd like to hope that we have beaten it,

not just Noah, but as a family.

In the future, I just want to get on with it.

I might want to be a rugby player and play for Edinburgh,

maybe Scotland, or a football player or a goalkeeper.

I just want to get on with my life,

do what I want to do,

whether it's playing rugby or playing football.

I just want to do it.

It's now time to return to our conmen making money they really aren't entitled to.

For a whole decade, Conrad De Souza had been passing himself off

as a doctor.

Not only had he indirectly put patients' health at risk,

but he'd defrauded the NHS of more than £477,000 in earnings

by pretending to be qualified.

This is the kind of investigation

we take extremely seriously, because patient safety is at stake

when you have somebody who is not clinically qualified

in a position where there is a risk to patients,

even if it's not a direct risk.

We had to act quickly.

In December 2010,

investigator Dave Horsley had gathered enough damning detail

to finally pin De Souza down

and get him to answer some very important questions.

NHS Protect officers went to De Souza's home address

with the police, at which point he was arrested

and the police undertook a search of his home address

to look for evidence that might assist our investigation.

Now they had De Souza where they wanted him,

the team could search his property to find hard evidence

and finally put an end to the conman's trail of deception.

And what did you find?

We did find at his address the University of London certificate,

showing, or purporting to show, that he had a medical degree from them in 1981.

-That must have been a fake, then?

-Absolutely, yes.

We were able to take that back to the University of London

and they were able to provide examples of genuine certificates that were issued at that time

and it was quite obvious, comparing the two,

that Mr De Souza's one was not genuine.

It was a great result, and just what the investigators needed.

But it wasn't the sum total of their haul.

We also found documents that linked him

to the work of the Primary Care Trust,

so we knew we'd got our right man

and we also seized computers and laptops

that showed the money that had been paid to him.

Now the team had the proof they needed.

The next step was to interview De Souza.

He had a whole heap of explaining to do.

How did that interview go?

He made no comment to all of the questions put to him.

We gave him the opportunity to give an explanation for

everything that we had uncovered

and he chose to answer none of those questions.

You really need something from him to explain it one way or the other, don't you?

Absolutely. We were then faced with having to prove the offence from our perspective.

So it's a case of looking at all the available information that's out there

and collecting it in a form that's acceptable

to the court as evidence

and putting the case forward on that basis.

De Souza was interviewed twice before his case went to court

and given ample opportunity to explain his actions,

but he never did.

His lawyer offered in mitigation

that Conrad De Souza had come from a family

of high achievers

and the choice of admitting to his family that he'd dropped out of medical school

and failed to qualify as a doctor was something which he couldn't face doing.

And sadly, he took the alternative choice,

which was to continue the deception.

And that choice would cost him dearly.

In October 2011,

Conrad De Souza was charged with two counts

of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception.

This related to his successful job applications in 2002 and 2005,

which he secured by lying to Lewisham Primary Care Trust

about being a qualified doctor.

He pleaded guilty to both charges

and was sentenced to 18 months for each offence,

to run concurrently.

He was also given a further nine months in prison

for providing the CSA with a false DNA sample

to avoid accepting his responsibilities as a father.

So, a total of 27 months behind bars

and a big result for Dave and the team.

It was a very good result for NHS Protect.

It sent out a strong message to anybody who might be thinking of defrauding the NHS -

you get caught. Crime doesn't pay.

You can't go around pretending to be a doctor

or any other kind of healthcare professional.

It's something we take very, very seriously at NHS Protect.

As you would imagine.

Not content with the 27-month prison sentence they'd secured,

Sue Frith's team were also determined to claw back

as much of the conman's fraudulent earnings as they could

and put the money back in to patient care.

How about getting that money back so it can be put to a better purpose?

Well, there is something called the Proceeds of Crime Act that we use

so we can look at what assets an individual has

and how they've benefited

from their crime financially

and then we would look to seize their assets

to pay back that benefit of crime into the public purse.

Although De Souza had earned nearly half a million pounds

from his work for the NHS and Lewisham Primary Care Trust,

at court, an agreement was reached

that the value of his criminal benefit

was just under £330,000.

A free man in December 2012,

having served just 12 months of his sentence,

Dave made sure De Souza was put back in the dock to settle his debt.

In court, his assets were determined to be £270,000.

So the court made an order that he should repay £270,000

within six months,

which we're pleased to say he did do.

He paid it back in full.

So De Souza's shares in his three properties were seized

and the £18,000 he'd been looking forward to retiring to

was also taken when the NHS clawed back his pension payments.