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A nurse who claimed more than £1,300 following a "crash for cash" insurance scam has been struck off from the profession.

Nicola Bartlett, 52, lied about her involvement in a car crash while working in a hospital A&E department.

But a disciplinary hearing was told suspicious police had already began investigating the garage which wrote off her "damaged" vehicle in the insurance scam.

Easifix garage in Newport helped stage 28 fraudulent crashes to collect pay-outs totalling £750,000 between 2009 and 2011.

The garage fraudsters were caught out by their own CCTV cameras showing a LandRover being deliberately driven into a forklift truck.

Bartlett was among the 158 people caught out in the scam - and was later sacked from her job at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr in Hengoed, near Caerphilly.

When she appeared in Cardiff Crown Court in 2015, she was given a nine-month suspended jail sentence.

Now a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel has handed Bartlett a striking off order, stopping her working as a registered nurse. She cannot reapply to be reinstated to the nursing register until five years have elapsed.

Panel Chair Robert Barnwell said: "Mrs Bartlett’s actions were significant departures from the standards expected of a registered nurse, and are fundamentally incompatible with Mrs Bartlett remaining on the register.

"The panel was of the view that the circumstances in this particular case demonstrate that Mrs Bartlett’s actions were serious and to allow her to continue practising would undermine public confidence in the profession and in the NMC as a regulatory body."

The NMC made the decision following a hearing at its Cardiff offices in Cathedral Road.

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Bartlett, of Bargoed, near Caerphilly , was charged with conspiracy to defraud and found guilty by a jury at Cardiff Crown Court in December 2015.

The NMC said Bartlett had tried to appeal her conviction, but had been unsuccessful and now "exhausted all avenues open to her".

Barlett did not attend the hearing - but previously told nursing officials that her conduct "would be considered deplorable by the public and her fellow professionals".

She has 18 months to appeal against the NMC's decision.

How much did the scam cost? The first wave of prosecutions involved: 28 fraudulent collisions involving 85 people

57 vehicles

87 people charged and 81 prosecuted

The cost to the insurance industry was £763,068 In the second, the 77 defendants received a total of: 123 months’ custody

296 months’ suspended sentences

48 months’ conditional discharge

6350 hours of unpaid work

£127,242 compensation orders

When she previously appeared in court, Judge Daniel Williams told her: “You lied to your insurers, and you persisted in those lies at trial. By then, of course, you were trapped in the lies that you had told before.

“You were unable to confront the truth because of the consequences to you and your career."

After the trial she was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment suspended for two years, ordered to complete 250 hours of community service, and told to repay £1,350.

In a letter to a previous hearing of the Nursing and Midwifery Council, Bartlett wrote: “I am fully aware and conscious of the seriousness a conviction has on the nursing profession.

“I am ashamed of the conviction before me which will stay on my record forever. Any future employer will know about this and I will need to explain myself.

“Upon reflection I have accepted responsibility for my actions and have developed a plan to ensure that I do not make similar poor decisions again.

“This conviction has had such an impact on my life and has also brought the nursing profession into disrepute.

“I agree that a nurse serving a sentence should not practise until the sentence is complete.

“However once my sentence is complete I believe I possess a vast range of knowledge, skills and many positive qualities to offer the nursing profession, which is evidence in the numerous favourable supportive personal and professional character references.”