A medical centre manager who embezzled £59,000 of surgery funds has been jailed for three years.
Ashok Patel, who brought Leicester's Highfields Health Centre to the brink of bankruptcy, was sentenced yesterday after being convicted of three counts of fraud.
Judge Robert Brown, at Leicester Crown Court, said 54-year-old Patel was not content with his "handsome salary" of £53,000 a year.
He told him: "You realised it was easy to steal from the practice and you duped the senior partners into signing blank cheques.
"You're a conman and you conned your way into the position of practice manager.
"You falsely claimed to have a degree from the University of Leicester, when you didn't have a degree from any university.
"You gained the trust of the doctors and pretended to be a devout Hindu, as your employer, Dr Jatin Patel, was."
During the trial, Dr Patel told the court Ashok Patel's actions could have forced the centre to close, with the loss of 25 jobs and affecting 8,000 patients.
Judge Brown said: "You also accused Dr Patel of lying and claimed the doctors conspired to remove you from your job, but the jury rejected that."
The court heard the health centre's NHS-funded surgeries, in Melbourne Road, Highfields, and Moira Street, Belgrave, were saved thanks to a £25,000 insurance pay-out.
Dr Patel, whose father started the practice 30 years ago, attended the hearing.
Speaking afterwards, he said: "I was hoping for a longer sentence but justice has been done, if only to protect others from this guy's clutches.
"He's been proven to be an out-and-out fraudster."
Dr Patel said despite everything Ashok had done, the practice was going from "strength to strength".
Ashok, of Blundell Road, Evington, Leicester, had denied the charges.
But the court heard he diverted thousands of pounds into his own bank accounts, drawing out large sums in cash and obtaining goods and services for himself, between March 2008 and July 2010.
He was cleared of one fraud offence alleging he misappropriated £1,000.
Balraj Bhatia, mitigating, said six references spoke well of the defendant, who had carried out cricket coaching and charitable work.
He said: "It's easy to simply dismiss him as a manipulative, dishonest man but there's another side to his character. He's not entrenched in dishonesty."
Mr Bhatia said the defendant's 77-year-old mother relied on him for daily care and that he was suffering from ill health, including depression.
"He no longer has that confidence, some may call it arrogance, that he showed in the face of the evidence," he said.
Mr Bhatia also said that, at the last hearing, it was wrongly stated he had a previous conviction for taking £850 while working for Burger King.
Mr Bhatia said Ashok had never worked for the chain and the conviction related to him using a false name to obtain income protection insurance and attempting to obtain property in that way.
