New Zealand’s best (or worst) fraudsters, fakers and forgers

From claims of royalty, embellished military records and extravagant wealth, to New Zealand’s only convicted art forger, we take a look at people took the phrase ‘Fake it ‘til you make it’ to heart.

Just how a man alleged to have posed as a doctor was able to work at one of the country’s busiest hospitals has raised concerning questions about how easy it is for such significant deceptions to go undetected.

If the following list is anything to go by, it’s more easily achieved than some might believe.

Police are now investigating after Yuvaraj Krishnan is alleged to have used fake documents to secure a job at Middlemore Hospital, where he worked for several months and saw dozens of patients before it was discovered that he was not in fact a registered doctor.

It has since been revealed that he was previously trespassed from a university after posing as a medical student for two years, during which time he is alleged to have dissected cadavers.

There are plenty of examples of others using fraudulent credentials, medical and otherwise, both in New Zealand and abroad. Here are some of them:

The fake psychiatrists

New Zealand woman Zholia Alemi practised psychiatry for 22 years in the UK despite not having any qualifications.

In 2018, she was jailed for fraud and theft after she was found to have doctored an elderly dementia patient’s will in an attempt to inherit the pensioner’s £1.3 million estate.

Alemi falsely claimed to have obtained a medical degree from the University of Auckland when she registered to work in the UK in 1995, but she had actually dropped out of medical school after failing the first year of her five-year course.

Her fraudulent activities prompted an urgent review into some 3000 foreign doctors working in the UK by the General Medical Council, which decides whether a doctor is qualified to practise there.

Another fake psychiatrist was Mohamed Shakeel Siddiqui, who worked for the Waikato District Health Board for six months in 2015, with a salary of $165,250, before suspicions were raised about his credentials and charges were laid.

Originally from India, he used the credentials of an actual psychiatrist, Dr Mohammed Shafi Siddiqui, who is working in Illinois, United States.

Following the case, which spanned more than two years, he was sentenced in the Hamilton District Court in 2017 to four years and three months’ imprisonment on four charges of deception and forgery.

NZ’s most infamous art forger

It’s believed that New Zealand’s only convicted art forger, Karl Sim, forged the paintings of as many as 50 different artists before he died in 2013.

The Mangaweka-born man was taken to court for forging the works of C F Goldie and Petrus van der Velden in the mid-1980s. He was convicted on 40 counts, fined $1000, and ordered to paint the Foxton Town Hall and public toilets as part of 200 hours’ community service.

He later changed his name to Carl Feodor Goldie, so he could legally sign his Goldie works.

So renowned was Sim that the biannual Fakes and Forgeries competition and exhibition was set up in tribute at the Rangitikei town’s Yellow Art Gallery.

His was one of the names brought up when it was discovered that the Alexander Turnbull Library paid $75,000 of public money for a forged Lindauer portrait.

Ministry of Transport fraudster

A former senior manager at the Ministry of Transport, Joanne Harrison, also known as Joanne Sharp, was convicted in 2017 of stealing more than $720,000 from the ministry by using invoices to pay three entities over a fouryear period.

In 2019, a Stuff Circuit investigation discovered that she had changed her name to Joanna Middleton, and had used that identity to apply for highpaying jobs at two major companies in the UK, where she had been deported to after serving less than two years of her three-year, seven-month sentence.

Disgraced top defence scientist

Stephen Wilce, head of the Defence Technology Agency (DTA) and New Zealand’s chief defence scientist, resigned after outlandish and implausible claims by him were exposed by TV3’s 60 Minutes. They included being a British Royal Marine combat veteran, and a member of the British bobsleigh team at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, according to the TV show, which said no record existed of Wilce serving in the marines, and no bobsleigh team had heard of him.

The false Tahitian prince

Kiwi fraudster Joel Morehu-Barlow, legal name Hohepa Hikairo Morehu-Barlow, was jailed for 14 years in 2013 after pocketing A$16.69m from his employer, Queensland Health, between 2007 and 2011.

He was said to have used the proceeds from his crimes to fund a lavish lifestyle in Brisbane. When asked by his colleagues about this, he told them he was a Tahitian prince. After his arrest in 2011, Australian police discovered a treasure trove of luxury items fit for royalty inside his waterfront home, including an iPod engraved with ‘‘HRH’’ – the title for His Royal Highness – 30 pairs of Louis Vuitton shoes, and a crown, which was auctioned to recover some of the money he had embezzled.

The fake lawyer who allegedly scammed thousands from the vulnerable

Then 22-year-old Kieran Withers, who claimed to be a millionaire, fleeced thousands of dollars from his victims across Auckland and Christchurch.

The Pukekohe man’s offending came to light after several of those swindled laid complaints with police, leading to him being sentenced to two years and nine months behind bars in relation to charges including obtaining money by deception, and dishonest use of a document.