Dentist in £85,000 fake claims is jailed

Daljit Singh Jabbal, 56, said he began submitting false claims, sometimes for non-existent patients, because he felt under pressure to meet his contract targets after being off work sick for a number of months in 2007.

But in November 2008 the father-of-three confessed to what he had been doing and last month he admitted false accounting.

Jabbal, of Quaker Lane, Hightown, Liversedge, de-registered himself as a dentist and Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday that all the money had been repaid to Bradford and Airedale Primary Care Trust .

Jabbal, who had a surgery in Killinghall Road, Bradford, was described by his barrister Abdullah Al-Yunusi as a pillar of the community until the offending came to light.

The court heard that Jabbal, who qualified as a dentist in the late 1970s, was on anti-depressants and was having health and family problems at the time of his offences.

Mr Al-Yunusi said: "There were various targets he was required to meet in order to comply with his contractual obligations with the PCT and rather foolishly he began on the course that he took in order, initially, to comply with the various contractual obligations that he had.''

If a patient came in for a check-up and polish Jabbal would submit an additional claim for a filling or a denture.

Alan Stewart, North and Yorkshire operational fraud manager, NHS Counter Fraud Service, said: "The public rightly expects a dentist, and all who work in healthcare, to be trustworthy."