Pharmacist and Boots store manager Pantea Shahiri, registration number 2221111, has received a two-month suspension for carrying out refund transactions to her own card for numerous electrical products without purchase receipts.
In hearings between September 2025 and January 2026, an FtP committee heard that the refunds, which were carried out “on 20 occasions over a period of just one month”, totaled more than £3,760.
According to hearing documents, Shahiri obtained refunds for products including a Dyson Airwrap and numerous £400 Oral B electric toothbrushes on her credit card despite not being “100% certain that they were all purchased from Boots stores”.
Read more: Indemnity: Pharmacist suspended again over ‘dishonest’ claims
The regulator accepted that she had “made admissions to the conduct...from the outset” and that she had “repaid the monies to Boots”.
And it acknowledged that she had “demonstrated genuine remorse, insight and remediation”.
But it stressed that she had been “in a position of authority at the time as the store manager” and that this position “had enabled her to obtain refunds on her credit card when this was not permitted”.
“No proof of purchase”
Shahiri was working as a Boots store manager in Welwyn Garden City between February and March 2023 when she obtained multiple refunds from the pharmacy without being certain whether she had purchased the items from Boots and without a “purchase receipt”, the document said.
This was despite the fact she “had been aware” of the Boots refund policy and “had known that allowing refunds to be made in the absence of receipts to her credit card, rather than a gift card” was in “breach” of that policy, it added.
The committee was made aware of this matter in August 2023 when Shahiri was referred to the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) after the Boots fraud analytics team had “flagged several high value refunds which had been processed”.
Read more: Pharmacist suspended for contacting patients on WhatsApp
The referral stated that the refunds “had been processed with no proof of purchase” and were “not in line with company processes”, the document said, adding that Shahiri was consequently dismissed from her job towards the end of April 2023.
It noted, however, that she had “admitted to not following company policy” when questioned.
The document set out that some of the refunded items included a Babyliss hair straightener and hair dryer, sun cream, four £400 Oral B electric toothbrushes, Estee Lauder perfumes and three Dyson Airwrap products amounting to almost £1,500.
“Faulty”
In her evidence, Shahiri “accepted she had breached the Boots refund policy as her refunds should have been made to a gift card rather than to her own card”.
She told the committee that “other colleagues had seen all the items she returned” and explained that most of the items that were refunded were “bought on behalf of her mother, by her mother’s friends”.
Her mother would ask friends to buy items for her, but they would “often end up getting the wrong items or too many of the items she had asked for”, she said.
Read more: ‘Cavalier’ online pharmacy owner suspended after patient death
Speaking about the Dyson Airwrap, Shahiri said that someone else had purchased it “on her mother’s behalf” as a gift for her, but she had returned it after discovering it “was faulty and did not work”.
For the four Oral B toothbrushes, she explained that two of them were “intended to be gifts” but this never happened, while the other two were “faulty”, so they were all returned.
Read more: Pharmacist warned for telling patient Covid jab alters DNA
She told the committee that she “had not intended to cause any harm and had always known that the refunds could be traced back to her”.
But the regulator highlighted that Shahiri “had used her position as a store manager to treat herself differently to the way a member of the public, or indeed other colleagues at the pharmacy, would have been treated in similar circumstances”.
“Breached” policy
The regulator accepted that Shahiri had “cooperated with her regulator throughout these proceedings”, also noting that she had “been dealing with some challenging personal circumstances and health issues at the material time”.
And it acknowledged that she had a “prior unblemished record and no additional concerns had been raised since the misconduct, which had taken place three years ago”.
But it stressed that her misconduct had been “repeated on 20 occasions over a period of one month” and that she had “placed colleagues at risk by breaching the refunds policy”.
Read more: Suspended pharmacist made £50k selling medicines on eBay
It also noted that the amount of money involved was £3769.93 – a “significant sum which [she] had gained financially for a short time”.
The GPhC determined that while Shahiri had “admitted acting with a lack of integrity” and had made “early admissions to her conduct” along with taking steps to repay the money, this was “after she had been questioned about the refunded transactions”.
It took into account her “remediation” and “remorse” but stressed that her behaviour was “serious, particularly as she had been in a position of trust as the store manager”.
Read more: Antidepressants to ‘vulnerable patients’ - pharmacist warned
The regulator concluded that a “suspension order of two months would be sufficient to reflect the seriousness of the misconduct and meet the public interest concerns it had identified”.
Read the determination in full here.
