A Dundee doctor could be banned from practising medicine after watchdogs found she claimed child benefit for babies that didn’t exist.
Kiyo Adya’s hearing before the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) centred around claims that she filled out false applications and claimed benefits she was not entitled to, while working as a medic.
On Tuesday, the tribunal found she had carried out a catalogue of dishonesty.
Among the allegations proven were that Adya, 33, “purported to be eight different people in order to discuss child benefit claims”.
Applications for child benefit
In a case laid out before the MPTS, Adya was found to have completed applications for child benefit and healthcare professionals’ statements in support of them, between May 17 2015 and August 2 2015.
On July 1 2015, she wrote a letter under an assumed name, which was submitted together with an application for child benefit.
She enclosed a birth certificate for “her daughter” and requested that child benefit payment be backdated to the date of birth, the hearing was told.
‘Purported to be eight different people’
Between July 15 2015 and October 9 2015, during telephone conversations with the Child Benefit Centre, Adya purported to be eight different people in order to discuss child benefit claims.
In this, she was found to have been dishonest in that she was not entitled to make the claims.
It is alleged that Adya’s fitness to practise is impaired because of her misconduct.
The tribunal will now go on to consider whether this is the case, and what sanctions will be made as a result – including the possibility of her being banned from the medical profession for life.
The hearing is scheduled to run until August 10.
Boyfriend’s scam involving 26 ‘fake’ babies
Adya’s fraudster boyfriend Rory McWhirter was jailed for more than two years in 2017 after registering the births of 26 non-existent babies in a benefit fraud scam.
McWhirter concocted the complicated scheme while living with Adya in Dundee. She had all criminal charges against her dropped.
He duped people into applying for fake jobs at a Glasgow hotel through an ad on Gumtree – then used their identity details and those of other couples to get copies of their marriage certificates.
He then forged letters claiming the children had been born in home births.
McWhirter used birth certificates for non-existent children to claim for tax credits, child benefit and maternity grants.
McWhirter’s scheme was only rumbled after he returned to the scene of one of his early false birth registrations at Aberdeen registry office and was recognised by staff.
More than 350 applications for tax credits
Around the same time, an “organised attack” on HMRC’s computer systems – which showed around 350 requests had been received for tax credits application forms from an address in Dundee and others in Campbelltown linked to McWhirter – triggered other alarms.
In the end it was McWhirter’s BMW Z4 convertible car that he used to travel to the registrar offices across Scotland that led police to his door.
However, he was ordered to pay back just £1 at a confiscation hearing after the court was told he had no assets of his own and that his home was in Adya’s name, meaning he had no way of paying back the money.