Nurse struck off for pocketing £16,000 in ‘cash for crash’ scam

An NHS nurse has been banned from the profession for faking injuries to take home more than £16,000 in compensation in a bogus “crash for cash” insurance scam.

Nicola Bartlett, 50, lied that she suffered injuries in a car crash while working in a hospital A&E department.

The NHS nurse fiddled £16,764 in compensation claiming another driver ploughed into her car writing it off.

The chairman of the panel investigating the incident, Robert Barnwell, said that allowing her to continue to work as a nurse would “undermine public confidence in the profession”.

But a disciplinary hearing was told suspicious police had already began investigating the dodgy garage which wrote off her “damaged” vehicle in the insurance scam.

Easifix garage in Newport, Gwent, helped stage 28 fraudulent crashes to collect pay-outs totalling £750,000 between 2009 and 2011.

The garage criminals were caught out by their own CCTV cameras showing a LandRover being deliberately driven into a forklift truck.

Bartlett also treated her dad in hospital for injuries from another bogus crash and made medical notes.

A fitness to practice hearing was told Bartlett was dismissed for gross misconduct from Aneurin Bevan Health Board in August 2016.

Now a Nursing and Midwifery Council panel has handed Bartlett a striking off order – stopping her from working as a nurse for life.

Panel Chair Mr Barnwell said: “Mrs Bartlett’s actions were significant departures from the standards expected of a registered nurse, and are fundamentally incompatible with Mrs Bartlett remaining on the register.

“The panel was of the view that the circumstances in this particular case demonstrate that Mrs Bartlett’s actions were serious and to allow her to continue practising would undermine public confidence in the profession and in the NMC as a regulatory body.”

Bartlett had been working at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr in Hengoed, near Caerphilly, South Wales.

Bartlett, of Bargoed, near Caerphilly, was jailed for one year at Cardiff Crown Court in 2018.

She was one of more than 150 people in Britain’s biggest ever “crash for cash” insurance racket.

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The family-run garage business netted £2 million by conspiring with a web of friends and relatives to swindle the insurance industry out of cash.

The family helped stage fake car crashes for themselves and for others so they could make money out of bogus compensation claims.