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Fake NHS boss ordered to sell boat to repay earnings

Ex-social worker Jon Andrewes, 64, invented fake degrees to land jobs running a hospice and two NHS trusts.  He admitted deception and fraud and was jailed for two years in 2017.

On Thursday at Exeter Crown Court he was ordered to pay back £97,737.24 under the Proceeds of Crime Act.  Andrewes, from Totnes, ended up as chairman of the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust.  He also misled St Margaret's Hospice in Taunton, where he was chief executive from 2004 and Torbay Care Trust when he became chairman in 2007.

The court heard the fraud led to Andrewes being overpaid by £643,000 over more than a decade.  Recorder Martin Meeke QC rejected Andrewes's claim that he was entitled to keep the pay because he had worked hard and effectively, regardless of how he came to get the jobs.  He set the amount by which Andrewes had benefited as £643,000 but assessed his available assets as only £97,737.24.

The judge ordered him to pay this sum within three months or go back to jail for a further year.  He said: "I bear in mind the defendant was narrowly preferred to another candidate when he was appointed to the hospice and those who appointed him considered honesty and integrity to be central to the result.  "These were qualities which he clearly lacked."

The assets he must sell include a half share in a Dutch barge, a share of his profit from the sale of the house in Topsham, an insurance payout for a Seat Leon car, premium bonds, and a pension plan.