A pharmacist who failed to declare three convictions for travelling without paying rail fare to her employer or the General Pharmaceutical Council has been struck off by the regulator.  

Pharmacist Olutumi Adedeji was referred to the GPhC’s fitness practise committee in March 2021 by Rowlands Pharmacy, her former employer, after an internal investigation found she had not declared her convictions when applying for a role with the company in the spring of 2020.

Her convictions came to light in December that year when she provided her employer with her DBS certificate after being reminded on two occasions that this was necessary. The investigation resulted in her being dismissed in January 2021.

She told Rowlands Pharmacy investigators that she had notified the GPhC of the convictions. However, the regulator said it “has no recorded” of the convictions being reported to it “at any time” and that she has “self-declared on several occasions after 2019 that she had no criminal convictions at all”.

Ms Adedeji received the convictions between July 2016 and December 2017 from magistrate courts in Reading and Swindon. Two convictions were for travelling without paying fare, and one was for attempting to do so.

In a hearing that took place from December 18-21 that was not attended by Ms Adedeji, the GPhC’s fitness to practise committee found she had breached two fundamental principles of the profession, the most “significant and serious breach” being that of Standard 6, which concern being trustworthy and acting with honesty and integrity.

The FtP committee acknowledged that the offences for which she was convicted were “at the lower end of the spectrum of dishonesty” but said this must be considered alongside her subsequent “sustained and systematic dishonesty” with her employer and the GPhC.

“The registrant misrepresented her character for personal gain; she did so to enable her name to be restored to, and renewed on, the register, and to practise as a pharmacist while working at Rowlands,” it said.

The committee concluded that removal from the register of pharmacists was the most appropriate measure to take because the combination of the convictions and her “dishonest conduct” with her employer was “fundamentally incompatible with her continuing to remain a registered professional given the risks of repetition which exists here”.