AN NHS manager who conned members of the public with fake training courses in a fraud totalling close to £20,000 was handed a suspended sentence yesterday.

Rachel Scarlett, 42, was employed as a trainer teaching staff how to take blood but while she should have been working for NHS Brent she ran her own company selling fake qualifications on the side.

The Neasden resident, of Verney Street, tricked her victims into thinking the £250 courses were genuine and would end with a job but the certificates she handed them were printed out on her computer at home.

DC Dax Hollick, from the Brent Police Priority Crime Unit, said: “Rachel Scarlett blatantly ignored the rules within the NHS and took it upon herself to defraud innocent members of the public and provide them with fraudulent certificates which she created on her home computer.”

She was handed an eight month sentence suspended for two years, ordered to do 150 hours community service and told to pay £250 compensation to each of six victims involved in the case at Harrow Crown Court.

Police say it took 18 months of hard work to bring her to court and are urging anyone who has been trained by Scarlett to speak to NHS Brent urgently.

Hannah Wenlock, local counter fraud specialist for NHS Brent, said: “Rachel Scarlett managed to abuse the trust of members of the public who believed they were being trained by NHS Brent and would get a job with the trust.”