Six years of medical school, a failed state exam, a forged licence, and eight years operating in a Munich clinic: the false gynaecologist and the document that fooled everyone

Germany licenses doctors through the Approbation, a state certificate issued after the final examination. The document is the whole system, which is why one forged copy went so far.

According to the Deutsches Ärzteblatt, the Munich Regional Court convicted a man from Schongau of forgery, misuse of title, fraud and intentional bodily harm, sentencing him to two years' imprisonment suspended on probation and a fine of 180 daily rates of 80 euros. He had studied medicine for six years and failed the state examination; after an unsuccessful court challenge to his grades, he forged the Approbation certificate. With a falsely certified copy of it, the reports say, he worked for eight years at the Munich clinic Rechts der Isar, where he also performed operations as a gynaecologist. Haufe described the case as one of an impostor with forged qualifications operating for years. Apotheke Adhoc reported a separate case in Kassel, where a 37-year-old was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for working repeatedly as a doctor on forged documents and making treatment errors.

The Munich case is unsettling precisely because the man was nearly a doctor. Six years of training meant he could pass as one to colleagues for eight years; the only thing he lacked was the examination, and the only record of that was the certificate he forged. Hospitals verified the copy, not the register.

For students the lesson cuts two ways. First, the value of a medical degree lies in the licence, and the licence lies in the regulator's file; anyone who offers to "arrange" a licence, a registration or an equivalence certificate for money is offering the Munich forgery. Second, when checking a doctor, a university official or an agent's "medical adviser", a certified copy of a certificate is not verification; the issuing authority's register is. Germany's state medical chambers can confirm an Approbation. A copy, however well stamped, was enough to get a man into an operating theatre for eight years.