Cardiff practitioner guilty of NHS fraud

A Cardiff-based optician who falsely claimed nearly £30,000 in payments from the NHS was sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended for two years at Cardiff Crown Court on Monday.

Sheelagh Murray, who owns The Eyecentre with outlets at Ely and Llanrumney in Cardiff, pleaded guilty to 33 charges of false accounting, with 1,108 counts taken into consideration.

The court heard that Murray, 63, submitted numerous claims to Bro Taf Health Authority, which she knew to be false, between September 1998 and February 2002 for a range of optical services. These included claiming payment for spectacles when none had been provided, claiming for replacement spectacles when the original pair had only been repaired, claiming for two sets of glasses when only one had been provided, and claiming for tints on lenses that were not provided.