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.

“She used her qualifications and intimate knowledge of the HSE and used her skill and professionalism to falsify documents over a period of years to carry out this fraud which was an economic crime carried out fully for economic advantage and not out of any dependency or any financial need.

“The matter came to a head as a result of the HSE investigation. Anything to do with HSE is clouded in myriad documents and much confusion. The HSE organised their own independent enquiry. As a result a complaint was made by them to the guards. An aggravating factor in this case was that as far as Christine Crowley was concerned, the game was up as the HSE knew Christine Crowley was defrauding them but when the guards became involved what was their level of cooperation? The investigating guard told me, none,” Judge Ó Donnabháin said.

The judge noted she pleaded guilty and expressed remorse. He said another aggravating factor was the fact that the crime was done over such a long period of years. However, he also took into consideration the fact that a jury did not have to deal with what would have been a phenomenally difficult case with an estimated duration of five weeks to hear 174 witnesses. He said that she had only moderate health and that was also had to be taken into consideration.

However he said that she had benefited from the past month in jail to the extent that her medical medication regime has been regularised and was an improvement on her self-medication.