Disgraced doctor who made £350,000 on top of his NHS salary writing fake medical reports for ‘crash for cash’ victims is struck off
- Dr Asef Zafar, 54, ran the ‘report-writing factory’ alongside work as a Surrey GP
- He was producing as many as 5,000 papers a year at around £70-a-go
- Dr Zafar avoided jail in 2018 when proceedings were brought by an insurer
A disgraced doctor who made £350,000 on top of his lucrative NHS salary by rattling out fake medical reports for ‘crash for cash’ victims has been struck off.
Dr Asef Zafar, 54, ran a ‘report-writing factory’ producing 5,000 papers a year at around £70-a-go despite his huge workload as a GP at Grays Medical Practice in Chessington, Surrey.
He had narrowly avoided jail in 2018 when civil contempt proceedings were brought by insurer LV over allegations of fraud.
Dr Asef Zafar, 54, ran a ‘report-writing factory’ producing up to 5,000 papers a year at around £70-a-go for ‘crash for cash’ victims. He did this despite his workload as a Surrey GP
Lord Justice Davis told the High Court in London: ‘Dr Zafar was at all material times employed within the NHS as a General Practitioner.
‘In addition, however, he engaged on his own account in private practice, providing medical reports for low-level personal injury claims.
‘He, remarkably, seems to have developed a system where he apparently could examine a patient or client and produce a report in the space of approximately 15 minutes.
‘He was to say that he might produce some 5,000 reports a year, with an annual gross income of around £350,000.
‘Quite how he was able to fit all this around his NHS responsibilities is not clear: and at all events it seems that his NHS premises were frequently used for his private medico-legal practice.’
Dr Zafar had worked as a GP at Grays Medical Practice in Chessington, Surrey (pictured)
The deception came to light when a personal injury law firm accidentally submitted two of the doctor’s reports. One accurately told how a taxi driver injured in a cash had been in one week of pain.
But a spurious altered version claimed the driver had been in six to eight months of pain.
Dr Zafar was suspended from practise by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal in 2019.
But the General Medical Council and the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care took the case to the Court of Appeal arguing that the punishment was ‘gravely wrong’.
The court quashed the suspension and struck off Dr Zafar from the medical register for misconduct.
Lord Justice Davis ruled: ‘Erasure is the only proper sanction. Accordingly, I would direct erasure of Dr Zafar’s name from the Medical Register.’