Health care worker facing jail for Macclesfield Hospital fraud

A health care worker who helped an illegal immigrant get a job looking after ‘vulnerable’ patients at Macclesfield Hospital has admitted his role in the fraud.

Jonathan Sutherland, 40, allowed Nigerian national Joshua Olajide Jideolaleye use his identity to work 36 shifts at the hospital in Victoria Road.

Jideolaleye, 40, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to fraud and was jailed for 16 months at Warrington Crown Court on July 10.

He later had his sentence slashed on appeal to eight months by judges at London’s Appeal Court.

Jideolaleye earned £3,500, between April and June this year which was paid into Sutherland’s account and then passed onto him.

Sutherland, of Fenchurch Avenue, Manchester, admitted fraud at Chester Crown Court on Friday.

He will be sentenced on December 16.

Jideolaleye arrived in the UK in 2005 using fake documents.

He claimed he was being threatened by the Nigerian mafia and sought asylum.

Jideolaleye qualified as a care assistant and worked in Manchester until his asylum application was refused in 2011.

Desperate to support himself Jideolaleye began using the name of another man, a hearing into his crime heard earlier this year.

The fraud was discovered by two employment agencies and Jideolaleye was arrested at the hospital on June 3.

It later emerged Jideolaleye had not been checked with the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB).

The judge at Warrington Crown Court who jailed him had described it as a sophisticated fraud with a degree of planning.

But at his appeal Mrs Justice Patterson said: “Jideolaleye, when he attended at the hospital, simply reported to them under the false name and supplied no other particulars.

“In the circumstances, we therefore accept his submission that this was an offence which was not one of the most sophisticated.”

She agreed that it was a ‘serious offence in that it exposed the NHS and vulnerable patients to a degree of risk’.

But Jideolaleye was genuinely remorseful and had co-operated fully with the police investigation, she said.

The judge, who was sitting with Lady Justice Rafferty and Mrs Justice Lang, allowed the appeal and halved Jideolaleye’s jail term from 16 months to eight months.