A man who was imprisoned after using forged medical documents to obtain a job at Middlemore Hospital has been denied parole.
Yuvaraj Krishnan was sentenced at the Manukau District Court to serve three years and seven months in prison in 2023.
He was convicted of five charges of dishonestly using a document, three charges of forgery, a charge of perjury, three charges of using a forged document, a charge of altering a document with intention to deceive and using an altered document with the intent to deceive.
Krishnan had attended the University of Auckland for the first year of a biomedical degree and applied for entry into the medical programme but was declined because he didn’t meet the academic standard.
Between 2011 and 2012 he attended lectures, classes and laboratories for the medical programme without being an enrolled student.
He acted as though he was a legitimate student and “went to great lengths to keep up this charade”, but was eventually found out and trespassed from the university.
Krishnan eventually forged multiple medical documents to give the impression he was a qualified doctor and obtained work at Middlemore.
In August, 2022, he responded to a job advertisement about a position as a dermatologist at an east Auckland practice.
His CV claimed he’d worked as a dermatology research fellow in a clinical trial unit in Botany from 2021 to 2022, which was the timeframe he’d worked at Middlemore.
His application for the role in Howick was unsuccessful as at that point news had broken about him being unqualified and having been stood down by the hospital.
When Judge Nevin Dawson convicted Krishnan, he said his conduct was “inexcusable”.
“A sentence needs to be imposed to get the message home to you and others that serious offending of this nature has consequences.
“The community need to be protected in this type of offending. They should be able to rely upon the health system in New Zealand and not have concerns about being treated by doctors who are bogus.
“The gravity of your offending is potentially very high, given the risk that members of the public may well have been placed in by your claiming to have expertise and qualifications you simply did not have.
“There are a number of aggravating factors I need to take into account.
“First is that you threatened the integrity of the justice system in New Zealand through a blatantly dishonest affidavit filed in the High Court and you did so in order to gain an advantage for yourself.
“The extent of loss from the offending is that you received approximately $135,000 in salary from various employees based on qualifications you did not have.
“In addition, there is potentially the incalculable harm to the health authorities in New Zealand but, particularly, to the many patients seen by you who were entitled to believe that they were being attended to by a suitably qualified health professional.
“They were not and their ongoing health was compromised by that. There is a gross abuse of trust in that all victims were very vulnerable.
“You deceived many people; both employers and patients to sophisticated forgeries and lies.
“Your level of premeditation was high. Your offending continued over a two-year period.
“It was carefully planned and had a high level of sophistication. You were previously exposed as a fraud at Auckland University but notwithstanding that you continued your charade.”
Krishnan recently went before the Parole Board with it being reported that his application was declined.
