A fake doctor who used forged documents to practice psychiatry in the UK’s national healthcare system for two decades has been jailed and ordered to pay back hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Born in Iran, Zholia Alemi and her family emigrated to Auckland, New Zealand, in the early 1990s. There, she failed to secure the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees required to work as a qualified doctor, but she didn’t let that stop her from fulfilling her dream. In the mid-90s, she moved to the UK, where she took advantage of a legal loophole that allowed Commonwealth doctors to practise without additional examinations. Normally, doctors who obtain their degrees overseas have to take the PLAB (Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board) test, but Alemi was able to bypass it using paperwork forged in the UK. She then went on to practice psychiatry all over the UK for about 20 years.