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A bogus
doctor whose evidence helped imprison a Birmingham
sex attacker for life has been jailed for ten years.
In the biggest con of its kind uncovered in Britain,
former mini cab driver and one-time waiter Barian
Baluchi (43) made at least £1.5 million treating
patients and helping hundreds of asylum seekers
remain in Britain.
Baluchi convinced judges, lawyers, doctors,
charities and government departments he was both an
eminent psychiatrist and a respected professor.
His intricate deception - which forced the NHS to
write to more than 2,000 people on his clinic files
warning them of the situation - resulted in an
impressive CV that literally filled a side of A4
paper.
A medical report prepared and signed by Baluchi as
'Professor BS Baluchi MD, MA, PhD, Consultant Neuro-Psychiatrist'
dated April 10 2003 and presented to Birmingham
Crown Court subsequently helped jail Donald Seaward
for life for a number of serious sex crimes.
The Crown Prosecution Service said Seaward may have
recourse to the Court of Appeal following Baluchi's
admissions earlier this month.
Baluchi, of Nightingale Road, Hampton, London,
admitted a total of 30 sample charges between
December 1998 and August 2003.
Sentencing him yesterday at London's Middlesex
Guildhall Crown Court, Judge Henry Blacksell said:
"Your criminality almost, even for a practised
fraudster, falls into new territory in this case."
Baluchi claimed he trained at Harvard, Colombia,
Newcastle and Sussex universities, went to Leeds
Medical School, and lectured on both sides of the
Atlantic.
The walls of his clinic near Harley Street were
"adorned" with authentic looking certificates, while
his name trailed a string of professional letters
including two PHds.
There was even a photo-graph of his "graduation"
from the Imperial College of Medicine and Science,
London.
But it was all fake. In reality the Iran-born
fraudster and successful asylum seeker, who began
his life in Britain taking fares, waiting tables and
working for a dry cleaning firm, had neither a
single qualification nor any medical experience.
Yet he easily tricked the General Medical Council -
the country's foremost medical watchdog - into
registering him as a doctor, fooled the Charity's
Commission into registering his clinic as a mental
health charity for migrants, and pocketed a fortune
in grants.
In the process the twice married father-of-two, who
hid behind a "fog" of pseudo-nyms and blatantly
stole other people's identities, carried out
operations, left patients in pain and repeatedly
gave evidence in court after becoming a member of
the Expert Witness Institute.
In the same year as the Seaward case, Baluchi was
involved in another in which a Kurd, who had been
granted asylum, unsuccessfully claimed at the Old
Bailey he was unfit to face trial for rob-bing and
sexually assaulting a string of victims.
The huge sums he banked by "bleeding the public
purse" allowed him to buy a plush £670,000 five-bedroomed
house, splash out on luxury cars - including a
£50,000 Mercedes with the plate D8CTR - and send his
daughter to private school.
He was caught after an immigration tribunal officer
tipped off the Home Office.
http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk
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