Stennard Barry (Barry Stannard)

Biography

2021:5 years in prison for misappropriating hundreds of thousands of pounds from the NHS

In early July 2021, Barry Stannard, a former IT manager at the British Department of Health, was sentenced to five years and four months in prison for fraud and theft of £ 806,229,80 ($1.1 million) from the British National Health Service.

Stannard pleaded guilty to two fraud charges at a court hearing in June 2021. Stannard followed his fraudulent schemes for seven years when he worked as head of unified communications at the Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust (MEHT). His conviction was the result of a lengthy investigation by the NHS Anti-Fraud Office (NHSCFA).

British Ministry of Health IT officer Barry Stannard sentenced to 5 years in prison for misappropriating hundreds of thousands

The investigation showed that Stannard submitted to MEHT a fake form of declaration of no conflict of interest, while in fact he was a director of two companies that received large sums of money from the trust between 2012 and 2019. The number of bills submitted was in the hundreds, but they were all billed for relatively modest amounts, so Stannard avoided serious checks for a long time.

NHSCFA CEO Sue Frith noted that procurement fraud poses a serious risk to the NHS, so the NHS Fraud Office is constantly working to develop new solutions to prevent fraudulent schemes.

This court hearing shows that the NHSFA's investigative and preventive anti-fraud work within the NHS is vital, said Frith.

The NHSCFA has called on NHS staff who are suspected of committing fraudulent acts in the health system to report problems to the NHSCFA through an online messaging service or by phone of a special line.^[1]

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