The Vet Stole Thousands. His Practice Let Him Keep Working. Nobody Is Surprised.

A UK disciplinary panel just heard something that reveals more about veterinary culture than about one bad actor. A vet reflects on the profession’s most uncomfortable blind spot.

A veterinary practice discovered that one of its co-owners had been making fraudulent purchases — thousands of pounds, fake invoices, money going somewhere it shouldn’t.

They found out. They confirmed it. And then they let him keep working.

This week, a UK disciplinary panel heard about it. The case is moving through the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons’ disciplinary process — slowly, as these things tend to go, in a profession that is considerably better at policing the welfare of animals than it is at policing the conduct of the people treating them.

I want to use this case not to condemn one veterinarian, but to examine what it reveals about the culture that made the response — keep him working, don’t escalate, handle it internally — feel like a reasonable choice to the people who made it.

This Is Not One Bad Actor

The UK vet fraud case is not an isolated incident. It is a data point in a pattern.

In 2025, the RCVS disciplinary committee heard the case of Dr. Donal Johnston, a County Down veterinary surgeon who admitted four separate charges of fraudulent pet insurance claims — including two that were entirely fictitious, with money diverted into his personal bank account rather than the practice’s. He received a reprimand and a warning.

A reprimand. And a warning. For fabricating insurance claims. For diverting client money. For fraud admitted across four separate charges.

In 2026, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority concluded a two-year investigation into veterinary services — finding, among other things, that vet businesses have the incentive and ability to limit consumer choice, particularly within large corporate groups, and that the regulatory framework is preventing the market from functioning as well as it could. The CMA’s remedies are expected to come into force in September 2026.

Two years. Of investigation. Into a profession that regulates itself.

The pattern is not one dishonest vet. The pattern is a profession that has consistently, structurally, prioritised internal resolution over external accountability — and that is now facing the consequences of two decades of that choice in the form of government investigations, public trust deficits, and disciplinary panels with cases that should have been escalated years earlier.

Why the Practice Let Him Keep Working

I am not going to pretend I don’t understand why they did it.

Veterinary practices are small, tight communities. Partners are colleagues first and business partners second — people you trained with, people you trust with your patients, people whose children you know. The decision to escalate misconduct to a regulatory body is not a clinical decision. It is a personal one, with personal consequences that extend far beyond the professional sphere.

There is also the business reality. A co-owner removed from a practice mid-year is a logistical problem: rosters, client relationships, ownership structures, financial entanglements. The path of least resistance — monitor the situation, manage it internally, give him a chance to correct it — is the path that keeps the practice functioning without disruption.

I understand the calculation. I don’t think it’s the right one. But I understand it.

What I don’t understand — or rather, what I understand too well — is how this calculation gets made again and again across a profession that holds itself to the highest standards when it comes to animal welfare, and to considerably more flexible standards when it comes to the humans in the room.

The Accountability Gap

Veterinary medicine has a self-regulation problem.

The RCVS governs UK veterinary professionals. The Veterinary Council of India governs Indian ones. These bodies have disciplinary processes — panels, hearings, sanctions. They function. Cases do get heard. Vets do get struck off.

But the referral pipeline depends on someone making the decision to report. And in a profession where the culture strongly favours internal resolution, the decision to report is experienced as a betrayal of the professional community rather than an obligation to it.

This is not unique to veterinary medicine. The same dynamic exists in medicine, in law, in any profession with strong internal identity and self-regulatory structures. The difference is that medicine and law have faced repeated, public reckonings with this dynamic — through high-profile cases, public inquiries, regulatory overhauls — that have forced cultural shifts toward external accountability.

Veterinary medicine, until recently, has not.

The CMA investigation in the UK is the closest thing to a forced reckoning the profession has faced in decades. Its finding — that vet businesses limit consumer choice, that the regulatory framework isn’t working — is the language of market regulators, not welfare advocates. It is the language that gets used when a profession’s self-governance has been found insufficient.

India has not had a CMA. The Veterinary Council of India has not launched a two-year market investigation into how vet practices operate. The equivalent pressures — insurance fraud, overcharging, internal misconduct handled quietly — exist here, in Indian clinics, without the regulatory architecture to surface them.

What the Profession Protects — and What It Doesn’t

Here is the uncomfortable truth that this case makes visible.

Veterinarians will report animal abuse. We will document it, escalate it, go to court over it if necessary. The Animal Welfare Act, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act — we know these, we cite them, we act on them.

We are considerably less systematic about applying the same standards inward.

A client who mistreats their animal risks a report to animal welfare authorities. A colleague who defrauds a practice risks an internal conversation and continued employment.

I am not saying the two are equivalent. Animal abuse and financial fraud are different things. But the asymmetry in response — the speed and certainty with which the profession mobilises to protect animals versus the slowness and reluctance with which it mobilises to hold its own members accountable — is worth examining honestly.

The profession that asks to be trusted with the welfare of animals has to be willing to be held to account for the conduct of the people inside it. Not by disciplinary panels that hear cases years after the fact. Not by government investigators who spend two years documenting what the profession already knew. By the colleagues, co-owners, and practice managers who are in the room when it first happens and choose — as the UK practice chose — to keep him working.

The disciplinary panel will issue a finding. The RCVS will apply a sanction. The case will close.

And somewhere in another practice, another internal conversation is happening about something that should be escalated but won’t be, because the profession’s culture still makes reporting feel like betrayal rather than obligation.

That is the blind spot. Not one bad actor. The culture that keeps producing the same response to him.

-Dr. Jivitesh Singh, B.V.Sc & A.H.