Nikiwe Dube jailed for child psychologist fraud

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Nikiwe Dube was sentenced to four years in prison on 26 July 2023 for offences involving false documents and deception. The proceedings were reported on 26 July 2023.

Dube pleaded guilty to four charges of using a false instrument and two counts of deception. The false-instrument charges concerned dates between November 2019 and February 2022 and included a psychological transcript with a false garda stamp, a false identification badge purportedly from the Psychological Society of Ireland and a fake medical certificate.

The deception counts concerned dishonestly inducing TTM Healthcare to put him on its employment books, causing a loss, on a date between 15 August and 9 September 2021, and dishonestly inducing the HSE to give him an employment interview on 18 August 2022.

The court heard that Dube used false documents to secure child psychologist employment in public and private healthcare without the required academic qualifications. He received €172,000 in wages and expenses while employed by Gateway Residential Care in Sligo between November 2019 and November 2021. The investigating garda said much of his work was remote during the pandemic and he had limited supervised and unsupervised interaction with patients.

Judge Elva Duffy described the conduct as a complex fraud involving an abuse of trust. She acknowledged Dube’s immediate admissions, remorse, guilty plea, positive probation and governor’s reports, and diabetes. Defence counsel Gerardine Small SC said Dube had educational attainment in the area.

The judge identified a headline sentence of five and a half years before imposing four years after taking mitigation into account. The sentence was backdated to 5 August 2022, when Dube first entered custody. The judge noted that the State had confirmed gardaí could not establish his true identity.