An Irish medical consultant who was jailed for fraud after staging a bogus burglary at his home is facing possible sanction after a medical tribunal found his fitness to practise is impaired.Dr Anthony McGrath was given an eight-year prison sentence in 2019 after being found guilty by a jury in England of an insurance scam involving a faked break-in and a series of fraudulent mortgages in 2019.Fraudulent applications for three mortgages worth more than £1 million (€1.2 million) on two properties, including a seven-bedroomed detached home in Clarence Road, St Albans, were backed by forged and false documents.As debts racked up, the court heard, McGrath made a false report to police that the home he was renting on a country estate – the 18th-century Garden Bothy, once of Inspector Morse fame – had been burgled and valuable antiques stolen.He claimed that among the stolen items were expensive antiques, Ming vases, oriental rugs, jewellery, art and even a 19th-century Rococo red marble fireplace worth £30,000. Many of the supposedly stolen goods were later found in McGrath’s parents’ home in Ireland.From Co Meath, McGrath graduated in 1996 from the National University of Ireland. He received his general practitioner’s licence in the UK in 2006. Jailing McGrath, the judge told him: “Your lies appear to know no bounds.”McGrath, who was released from prison in July 2025, has appeared before a medical practitioners tribunal service hearing in Manchester accused of misconduct.The General Medical Council (GMC) claimed the doctor’s fitness to practise was impaired due to his convictions, for which he continued to blame others and refused to “accept responsibility”.The tribunal agreed, noting he had “continued to shift blame to others”, lacked insight, and any remorse he had demonstrated was “self-serving”.Given the “high risk” of repetition and ongoing risk to the public, it concluded the doctor’s fitness to practise was impaired. This is an assessment of a doctor’s ability to practise their role “safely and effectively” and includes their professional and personal behaviour.The tribunal will now have the option of imposing a sanction, which includes imposing restrictions on his practice, a suspension or striking him off the medical register.The tribunal heard how McGrath had appeared before the court of appeal just days after his release from prison in an attempt to correct what he claimed were “factual inaccuracies” relating to his trial.But Charles Garside, for the GMC, said McGrath had made “wild allegations” against the trial judge, witnesses and prosecution, and had also sought to blame others, including his estranged wife.McGrath had shown a “complete lack of remediation and insight”, he said, while his evidence was “an attempt to attack his convictions and the basis for them”.In evidence, McGrath admitted misconduct but claimed it fell “at the lower end of the spectrum of seriousness”.His misconduct was unrelated to his clinical work, he said, and he had received “no benefit” from the mortgage or insurance fraud as the missing items were not covered by his policy.No financial institutions had lost out, he said, and his mortgage remained fully secured against his property, which he said was now worth “substantially more” than the outstanding loan.During his trial at Luton crown court, the jury heard how he faced “significant financial pressure”, yet McGrath told the tribunal that at the time of the fraud he had about £700,000 (€817,000) in cash and almost £2 million (€2.3 million) worth of artwork.He blamed his actions on the convergence of three “exceptional pressures”, including events relating to his “toxic and dysfunctional marriage”, fraud committed by contractors renovating his property, and “long-standing PTSD”.“These factors do not remove my personal responsibility but do, however, explain why an individual whose professional life has been characterised by honesty, hard work and dedication made profoundly poor decisions,” he said.