A Nigerian doctor has been struck off after he invented a fake landlord and fictitious tenancy agreement as part of a £12,000 housing benefits scam.

King’s College Hospital doctor, Olubunmi Adeagbo-Sheikh told the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) that he was renting a London property while in fact, the 40-year-old lived with his mother in Swanley, Kent but fraudulently claimed £900 a month for his fictitious home in the capital – at an address that didn’t exist.

Adeagbo-Sheikh was able to maintain the deception for 13 months between September 2018 and September 2019, collecting £11,700 in total and pleaded guilty to dishonestly making a false statement to obtain a benefit, advantage or payment in February 2024 and avoided jail time.

Now Dr Adeagbo-Sheikh has been removed from the medical register, with the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service calling his ‘deliberate’ fraud ‘fundamentally incompatible with his continued registration’.

The DWP investigated the irregularities and Dr Adeagbo-Sheikh was arrested on October 7, 2019. His laptop was seized and examined, and the police found WhatsApp messages between the doctor and a friend referring to the fraud.

He was spared jail in court but given 100 hours Community Order and later asked to pay back the total amount of money to the DWP.

Dr Adeagbo-Sheikh qualified with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 2013 in Nigeria and worked as a locum doctor there before moving to the UK in 2016.