A pharmacist took money from the till at work more than 200 times over three years. Photo / NZME
A pharmacist let a colleague take the fall for stealing thousands of dollars from the cash register at her workplace over the course of three years.
The woman then lied to the Pharmacy Council and her new employer about the criminal investigation so she could keep her new job.
It’s now cost the pharmacist, who has also secured name suppression, her practising licence for a year and she must meet a range of conditions before returning to the profession.
According to a recently-released ruling from the Health Practitioners’ Disciplinary Tribunal, the woman started working at the unnamed pharmacy in 2014.
She then moved into a casual position, but still had a key for the business and the code for the security alarm.
Between 2016 and 2019, she accessed the pharmacy more than 200 times and took between $100 and $200 from the register each time, but because of the way the cash system was operated, it’s not possible to tell exactly how much was taken in total over the three years.
She was eventually caught and charged with burglary before being sentenced to eight months’ home detention and ordered to pay back $19,000.
The Pharmacy Council, which oversees medical registration for pharmacists, became aware the woman was before the courts and ordered her to provide it with monthly updates about her case.
However, the woman didn’t tell the council she had admitted to and apologised for her offending in 2022, nor that she’d subsequently pleaded guilty and been sentenced.
She also didn’t tell her employer at a different pharmacy she’d been working at since 2019 about her convictions.
The first time the owner of that chain of pharmacies knew about its employee’s conviction was when the woman’s probation officer called and asked if they were happy for her to continue working there while on home detention.
Pharmacists are issued annual practising certificates and the woman falsified hers, changing any reference to the conditions imposed by the Pharmacy Council while she was partway through a criminal investigation.
The woman was then fired from her job at the new pharmacy.
At a hearing held by the tribunal this year, the former pharmacist faced charges of professional misconduct for stealing from her former employer, and for failing to keep the Pharmacy Council and her new workplace informed about the case while it was before the courts, and then about her subsequent conviction.
A Professional Standards Committee appointed by the council, represented by Gillian Weir at the tribunal, alleged the woman falsifying her practising certificate was a deliberate act to keep her new employer in the dark.
Weir sought to have the woman’s registration cancelled, and said there was a repeated lack of transparency alongside the abuse of trust in stealing from her employer.
“There was an ongoing lack of honesty and transparency, including repeated denials of the conduct to the Pharmacy Council,” Weir said in her submissions.
“The conduct involved a significant abuse of trust, with [the woman] taking advantage of her friend and employer.”
Weir also noted that another innocent pharmacist may have lost their job as a result of the woman’s actions.
However, the tribunal said that while this raised questions about how robust the investigation had been in terms of dismissing the other employee, it wasn’t a direct consequence of the woman’s offending.
The pharmacist provided submissions to the tribunal, saying she knew what she did was wrong and was extremely serious.
She said the offending had come about because she had set up a new business and was under financial and emotional pressure.
With regard to having falsified her practising certificate, she said she was worried the conditions imposed by the council would put prospective employers off, and she was desperate to get employment and income.
Her lawyer Ian Brookie said her actions were a result of her going into “damage control” and she was motivated by a desire to keep her job, rather than to deceive her employer.
The tribunal said the woman intentionally misled her employer and her conduct was “highly unethical, immoral and also possibly illegal”.
“Such unethical conduct undermines the confidence members of the public should have in health practitioners responsible for managing all requirements (clinical, legal and ethical) of the dispensing of medications to members of the public.”
“She did not simply omit some relevant information. She took the step of falsifying a document.”
In terms of failing to keep the council updated, the tribunal said there was a point where the woman must have known she was hiding information from them deliberately.
The tribunal said it opted to suspend, as opposed to cancel, the woman’s registration for a year by a thin margin, and ordered that if she returned to the profession, it be done under the guidance of a mentor, and that she must only work at a pharmacy approved by the council.
The woman was also fined $5000 but because her council was funded through Legal Aid she avoided having to also pay a $22,000 legal bill.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū, covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.