A Zimbabwean national Violet Nhende is among five nurses who were recently sentenced in UK for falsely claiming £73,000 from the National Health Service(NHS) for work they did not do.

Charles Elad, 46, from Milton Keynes, worked as a recruitment officer at ID Medical and recruited a number of temporary workers including George Kiberu, Violet Nhende, 49, Abosede Amusan, Ernest Anonyo and Rilindis Bessem.

Elad conspired with these workers to defraud the NHS, submitting false timesheets for work at Scunthorpe General Hospital, Royal Blackburn Hospital and Darlington Hospital for which the NHS was then invoiced. A significant number of those invoices were paid, the conspirators then sharing the proceeds between them.

The fraud was discovered when an NHS worker questioned an unsolicited invoice and raised the matter with NHS Counter Fraud Authority to investigate.

For her crimes Violet Nhende received eight months prison sentence suspended for two years.