Cork pharmacist, 72, jailed for six months over €70k fraud

A 72-year-old West Cork pharmacist was jailed for six months for egregious criminality carried out over several years to defraud the HSE of over €70,000.

Christine Crowley from Main St, Drimoleague,was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment with two years of that suspended, and the sentence backdated to March 3 when she went into custody.

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin said yesterday: “The criminality was egregious and she built into her system of management a criminality involving the organisation of accounts which required records to be fraudulently kept of what patients were entitled to, what was being prescribed for them, and what was being taken up for them on a monthly basis in a system for long-term HSE entitlements.