Another physician's name found online, a forged licence and 2,300 patients: the Tokyo "doctor" caught when the exam-prep school he taught at became suspicious

Japan licenses doctors nationally and lists them in a ministry database, which makes the case of Miyabi Kuroki, arrested in Tokyo in 2012, a useful study in how an impostor gets past a system that should have stopped him.

According to Japan Today and the agency reports carried by the Korea Herald and Arab News, Kuroki, then 43, had no medical education and had found the identity of a legitimate physician on the internet. On the strength of a forged medical licence in that name he was placed by an employment agency at a Tokyo hospital, where between 2010 and 2011 he conducted medical interviews, read electrocardiograms and explained check-up results to more than 2,300 people, earning about 2.62 million yen. He was arrested on suspicion of forging the licence and of working illegally as a doctor. Police said he had prepared for the role with a few hours of self-study.

What exposed him was not the hospital or the agency. He had also been "teaching" at a school that prepares students for the medical licensing examination, and its staff grew suspicious and contacted the hospital. People who actually sit the exam noticed what the hospital's hiring process had not.

Two points from this case apply to students and patients everywhere. First, a name on a register is only a check if the person in front of you is that person; a photograph, a licence number and the registry entry have to match, which is why serious employers and regulators ask for primary-source verification rather than a copy. Second, agencies that place staff on commission check what they are paid to check. The hospital trusted the agency, the agency trusted the paperwork, and 2,300 patients trusted the hospital. A medical school that outsources its admissions to agents has the same chain, with the student at the end of it.