Nothing but the tooth

The Bellend of the Month for January 2016 is Mark Walewski, a British dentist who splashed out on sports cars while conning the NHS (National Health Service) out of hundreds of thousands of pounds. 68-year-old Walewski, who pocketed almost £223,000 with a ‘systematic fraud’ at his surgery in Surrey over six years that may have involved more than 6,000 patients, pleaded guilty this month to carrying out a scheme known as ‘double claiming’, whereby he charged private patients for treatment and then billed the NHS for the same work. The dental surgeon, who had a NHS contract worth almost £350,000 a year, enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, living in a £2million six-bedroom country home with its own lake in the affluent village of Churt, near Farnham, Surrey. An investigation led by NHS Protect, which safeguards the NHS against fraud, uncovered the extent of fraud after questioning Walewski’s patients. It found the dentist had been ‘systematically defrauding the NHS’ between 2006 and 2012. The investigation also uncovered evidence that as well as double claiming the dentist may have been ‘up-coding’, whereby he submitted claims for a higher value treatment. His fraud may have also included ‘splitting’, which involves making several claims for a patient’s treatment which should have been submitted just once. Walewski was initially charged with 21 counts of fraud, but this was reduced to four in a plea bargain at Guildford Crown Court yesterday. Judge Stephen Climie warned the smartly dressed defendant his crimes could carry a custodial sentence. He said: ‘This is an offence of enough seriousness to warrant a prison term.’ I hope he gets such a sentence when he re-appears at the same court next month. Right now, he is on conditional bail.