A FAKE psychiatrist who tried to inherit a pensioner’s £1.3m estate by forging her will wanted her neighbours to invest £3,000 in a US finance firm.

The day after bosses at the General Medical Council (GMC) announced a wide-ranging investigation into Zholia Alemi’s illegal 23-year medical career in the UK, her next door neighbour in Workington has spoken publicly for the first time about her encounters with the fraudster.

Alemi, 56, pulled off an astonishing deception, claiming she had a medical degree from the University of Auckland.

A News & Star investigation has confirmed that she never qualified as a doctor.

A loophole in registration procedures for doctors trained in Commonwealth countries meant the deception went undetected for more than two decades.

The GMC is now checking around 3,000 UK-based doctors who went on to the Medical Register in the same way.

Meanwhile, fascinating new details have emerged about the fraudster, who worked as a locum psychiatrist in west Cumbria for eight months, until June 2016 - when the police investigation into the will fraud prompted her immediate suspension.

Mel Moon, 40, became Alemi’s neighbour after the “doctor” moved into the semi-detached house next door to her own in Scaw Road, High Harrington, in early 2016. “She moved into the house with nothing,” said Mel, a retail deputy manager.

“She introduced herself and said she was waiting for her furniture to arrive. We lent her some camping chairs and an air-bed. She took down our telephone numbers - and made my partner text her so she had it.”

Within days of that first meeting, Alemi tried to persuade Mel to invest in a US-based trading firm. “She told us that we had done a good turn for her, so she would do one for us.

“To start with, she suggested investing £300 - but later she said we should invest £3,000. She promised that she would triple whatever money we put into this company. It was some kind of trading firm. We felt it was all a bit strange so we told her we’d think about it.

“We thought it sounded like a scam.”

Despite their lack of interest, Alemi repeatedly asked Mel and her partner to invest in the US firm, and she even invited them round to her home for dinner so they could discuss it.

She said that the meal would be a traditional Iranian dish of some kind.

Mel and her partner noticed Alemi’s NHS ID-badge, and believed they had no reason to doubt her when she said she was a psychiatrist. “She went to New Zealand quite often,” said Mel. “She said her family were from there.

“One day, there was a problem with her bin. It was quite windy and and she’d put a lot of NHS paperwork into it. We didn’t look at it because it was confidential but it was blowing around. We reported it to the police.”

There were fascinating clues to Alemi’s liking for luxury. Mel recalled her arriving at Scaw Road in a red Lotus Elise - a car that can have a price tag of around £30,000. It had a personalised number-plate.

Asked what Alemi was like on a personal level, Mel added: “She seemed very friendly - a bit too friendly; pushy, even.

“On one occasion, she’d been away, and she came back with a present of biscuits for us. It was just how quickly she wanted us to invest. For about a week, she was sending us text messages about it.

“But when she spoke, and told us she was a psychiatrist, she was very convincing. It didn’t occur to us that she wasn’t. When we found out the truth, we were absolutely shocked. But the fraud bit didn’t surprise us.”