Southampton couple Anne-Marie Read and Matthew Green faked job references in order to obtain employment in the NHS putting hospital patient’s lives at risk.

The couple fraudulently wrote each others references for various health care jobs they were not qualified to undertake, a court was told.

Read, 36, only turned up for her first two days work at a job at Gosport War Memorial Hospital, before going off sick with “stress and anxiety” for nearly three months claiming over £2,300 in wages.

It had already been noticed by senior staff that she appeared to lack key skills needed for the job.

In the meantime, her boyfriend had written her a further fake reference stating he had once been her senior in order for her to secure work with Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust.

Portsmouth Crown Court were told that she arrived up for her new job whilst still signed off from Gosport – only to again go off sick within a few days citing the same reason.

Read also lied about qualifications she claimed she had earned from The Open University and Portsmouth University however neither had records of her having ever enrolled. In fact her qualifications were from the British School of Yoga.

Whilst on sick leave from both jobs, she even attempted to obtain a third job at a hospital in Surrey – however her application was unsuccessful.

The fraud was only uncovered when Read’s job application was probed by health bosses. The pair pleaded guilty to a string of fraud charges in February.

Recorder Ann Arnold said the pair had worked together “exposing patients who might have been under your care to the potential of risk and the health service to financial loss”.

Green was sentenced to a 12-month prison sentence. He was jailed because his crimes breached a suspended sentence he was serving for stealing from a former employer in 2011.

His partner was given an eight-month prison term, suspended for 18 months, as well as 100 hours unpaid work.