For 22 years, this skilled fraudster enjoyed a high-flying career as a psychiatrist. She became a consultant -  and reaped the rewards, buying multiple properties, enjoying foreign holidays, driving fancy cars.

Her hobbies included collecting Champagne.

Yet despite her high status, it was the suspicion of a professional carer – employed to support an 84-year-old west Cumbrian widow – that triggered the events that ultimately led to Alemi’s downfall.

The carer noticed that a valuable watch collection had vanished inexplicably from the home of Bridekirk widow Gillian Belham, an 84-year-old former Bank of England worker who became frail and vulnerable after the death of her husband.

It was early 2016, and Alemi had swept unexpectedly into Mrs Belham's life. Helping the widow with her shopping, taking her for meals, organising her finances... nothing seemed to be too much trouble for the pensioner's new 'doctor friend.'

As a locum psychiatrist, employed by the Workington-based Memory Matters dementia clinic, Alemi had met Mrs Belham after being asked to assess the widow for possible dementia.

She gave Mrs Belham a clean bill of health.

Alemi's class photo from when she began her academic studies at the University of Auckland. (Image: UGC)

Within weeks, Alemi had befriended Gillian Belham. But such was the care worker’s distrust of the widow's “doctor friend” that she contacted the police, expressing her concern about the missing watches, which had been a precious possession of the widow’s late husband Gerald.

Thus began the police investigation into Alemi.

When police raided the psychiatrist’s home and office, they made a shocking discovery: the revelation that Alemi had forged a fake will for Mrs Belham. Under its revised terms, the pensioner’s entire estate – worth a cool £1.3m – would go in its entirety to Alemi and her family.

Alemi created a fake email account for Mrs Belham, a stranger to the internet.

The fraudster also made a significant spelling error in an email allegedly sent by Mrs Belham, referring to the need to 'sing' the will before witnesses. That same mistake appeared elsewhere in Alemi’s report writing.

That telltale mistake was to feature again in Alemi's career of deception.

Alemi tried to keep a low profile as she left Carlisle Crown Court in 2018. (Image: Newsquest)

When the 'doctor' was finally jailed for that fraud in 2018, everybody believed Alemi’s downfall was complete. Bizarrely, she gambled her career on an audacious but doomed will forgery – and lost.

'An even bigger deception'

Yet an exclusive investigation by the News & Star revealed what was later found to be an even bigger deception. For almost 23 years, Alemi had worked in the UK as a doctor – yet she had never qualified.

Her attempt to gain a medical degree ended in failure.

It took just three phone calls from the News & Star to confirm that Alemi’s primary medical qualification was a fiction.

Despite the UK medical regulator – the General Medical Council – confirming that she was not qualified, Alemi steadfastly refused to accept this. It took a major Cumbria Police investigation to bring her to justice.

After years of investigation, that process reached a climax two weeks ago  at Manchester Crown Court when a jury declared Alemi, 60, guilty of fraud – including the forgery of her medical degree and the university verification letter that she submitted to the GMC when she first gained registration.

The Cumbrian detective who led the mammoth investigation of her bogus career was Superintendent Matt Scott.

Detective Superintendent Matt Scott led Operation Rupture, the global investigation of Zholia Alemi conducted by Cumbria Police. (Image: Newsquest)

“This has been, without any doubt, a significant operation – a global investigation with enquiries across the world, though predominantly in the UK,” he says.

“Alemi’s offending spanned 23 years.

“It went across the length and breadth of the UK. But it also featured New Zealand, Iran and Pakistan. Given that span of time, and the number of NHS trusts she worked for, there were a literally thousands of documents to go through.”

Time after time, the investigation uncovered a litany of lies. Alemi claimed to have completed her foundation year as a doctor at St Thomas Hospital in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.

READ MORE: Fresh revelations about fake doctor who worked in Cumbria

“It’s never existed,” says Matt.

So what did he make of Alemi as an individual? “She was in denial throughout this entire process,” he says.

“She’s never once admitted anything. She’s been adamant throughout that she achieved all of the qualifications she claimed. At times, she was difficult to deal with, emotional, uncooperative.

"But my ultimate view of Alemi is that this was a woman who had sold a lie and she then became convinced by that lie herself.

“She lived that lie.”

That perhaps explains why Alemi continues to protest her innocence. Yet the prosecution evidence was irrefutable. In the garage and an understairs cupboard of a house owned by Alemi in Northern Ireland police found a treasure trove of damning documentary evidence of her fraud.

'Some clues were blatant'

Matt says: “We found what I’d describe as a ‘forgers’ kit’: transfer letters, blank certificates, everything you’d need to fake a certificate.” Among the documents was a “practice” medical degree certificate made by Alemi.

Though the trial heard from a document expert, some clues were so blatant that anybody could understand their meaning, says Matt.

In particular, her weakness in spelling crept into her attempts at forgery. On Alemi’s medical degree there was a glaring error: the word "registrar" was spelled wrongly – as “regitar”. A similar mistake appeared on the verification letter Alemi supplied to the GMC, with the word verify spelled “varify.”

Also key to proving Alemi’s guilt was testimony of witnesses from the University of Auckland. Of particular importance was the evidence of Dr Graham White, the retired Sub-Dean of the University’s School of Medicine.

Unfortunately for Alemi, he was a meticulous record keeper. So it was that he was able to set out in detail the precise history of Alemi’s time at the university where she falsely claimed to have qualified as a doctor.

'She doesn’t have a medical degree'

Iranian-born Alemi had arrived in New Zealand in 1986, claiming to be a nurse and to have a science degree. A struggler academically, she scraped through a degree in human biology in 1992.

Describing her attempt to complete the second three-year stage of study to qualify as a doctor, Graham says: “Zholia Alemi graduated with a [human biology] degree and then went into the clinical programme in 1992.

READ MORE: Fraudster who worked in Cumbria found guilty of posing as doctor for 22 years

“That’s a further three years of study - and it's the guts of the medical course, the traditional double degree, Bachelor of Surgery, Bachelor of Medicine (the MBChB).

“It’s the same as the British model.

Dr Graham White (Image: Newsquest)

“But in 1992, she failed the first year of the MBChB but she was allowed to have another go at it in 1993. She managed to get through, but with a marginal grade. She was very weak academically.

“The following year, in 1994, the MBChB Year Two, is when there are major examinations for the students. They’re a pretty tough set of exams. Zholia was a clear failure that year.

“I remember, at the examiner’s meeting, that it was decided to not allow her a second change. So her period in the medical school ended in 1994 when she failed the second year of the MBChB.

“She wasn’t allowed to repeat it and she wasn’t allowed to go on to the final year, the MBChB Three, and was one of about seven students in her 1988 intake who didn’t complete the course.

“So she doesn’t have a medical degree from the University of Auckland. When I heard that she claimed she had, I got involved. I thought it was my duty - to try to protect the reputation of our Medical School.”

'Surely there must have been others who were concerned?'

The medical degree certificate Alemi sent to the GMC in London states that she was awarded her MBChB on September 5, 1992, which as actually the day she was awarded her degree in human biology. That was able to get away with her deception for so long was “mind-boggling,” says Graham.

“How did she falsify her documents to persuade intelligent people at the GMC that she was a doctor from Auckland University when a phone call to somebody on the staff here could have clarified this matter back in 1995.

“But what about her colleagues?

“I realise now that Zholia was a very weak student academically. We should say this: that our system caught her out. She did not end up with a medical qualification. That’s very important.

A police photo of Alemi after her arrest. (Image: Cumbria Police)

“We realised, once she had got into the MBChB programme, that she wasn’t a suitable student to become a doctor. But how can it be that, for 20 years afterwards, she was accepted by the medical profession in the UK, by her colleagues in psychiatry?

“Surely there must have been others who were concerned by her limited ability; who would have asked questions about her background? Perhaps she moved around a lot that that’s what explains it.

“There might have been a cunning aspect to it. I’m pleased to have had a part in helping to expose her.”

'She mightn’t be the only one'

As Alemi begins her sentence, Graham says more needs to be done to explain how Alemi got away with it.

He adds: “She mightn’t be the only one.”

During her career - which was characterised by frequent moves - Alemi chose to specialise in working with perhaps some of the most vulnerable patients - those with dementia and people with learning difficulties.

Alemi's fraudulent entry on the GMC register. (Image: Newsquest)

She also provided inadvertent clues to her ability to lie, illegally at one point assuming the authority to "section" patients, so that they could be detained in a hospital and given compulsory treatment. Alemi also lied to the GMC, failing to tell them she was accused of assaulting a police officer.

The GMC says the more relaxed regime used by Alemi to gain entry to the UK’s register of qualified doctors closed in 2003. The more rigorous checking regime that now exists would prevent a repeat of such a deception, they insist.

READ MORE: Seven years jail for fake doctor exposed by News & Star journalist

Zholia Alemi will now face a proceeds of crime investigation. It will assess who much money she has made from her fraud and what her currently available assets are. A judge is likely to then strip her of those assets.

Detective Superintendent Scott worked on the case with Detective sergeants Leanza Vander Westhuizen and Chris Harland.

Also involved were the NHS Counter Fraud Authority, the CPS Specialist Fraud Office, as well as police other officers across Cumbria and in Northern Ireland.