False doctor gets 3 years in prison

Nuremberg/Erlangen. A doctor with fake diplomas and certificates, without even so much as a high-school qualification, has been caught.

The false doctor has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison, the court at Nuremberg confirmed. The Higher Regional Court had earlier rejected a revised application by the accused from August 2009, a judicial spokesman said on Thursday.   No legal errors were detected when reviewing the ruling.

Prosecutor's findings started in 2003. At that time the man had used a fake high school certificate as a medical student at the University of Erlangen.

As such, he collected two years worth of student allowances, nearly 20,000 euros. In parallel he used false training certificates to get work as a paramedic and later as an even better paid paramedic in some specialist medical service.

From 2006 the defendant faked approval as an emergency physician, with a rescue team putting him on 17 emergency campaigns. After this, the trained banker applied for an assistant surgeon position in the Surgical Clinic of Erlangen. With confidence in the authenticity of qualifications presented, he was actually hired as an intern, where he worked for nearly one year. In 2008, he led local politicians in the Thuringian town Sonneberg to believe that he wanted to open a private clinic.