Elmira Yaghmaei
Introduction
Dr. Elmira Yaghmaei is a doctor based in Havering, East London, who worked as a tutor at Common Stations Limited, a Romford academy that provided courses for the Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board (PLAB) 2 test taken by international medical graduates seeking registration with the General Medical Council. A Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) tribunal found that Yaghmaei taught her students using confidential information about the content of the PLAB 2 exam — information elicited from former candidates — and passed it off as her own original teaching material, knowing it would help Common Stations students cheat. She was struck off the medical register as of September 30, 2026. The case began with a folder of exam content, stamped with Common Stations copyright claims, that a GMC staff member found left behind at a Clinical Assessment Centre on a PLAB 2 exam day in February 2019.
Background Information
Yaghmaei tutored at Common Stations PLAB Academy in Romford, which offered PLAB 2 preparation courses to overseas doctors. The PLAB 2 exam evaluates the clinical and professional skills of international medical graduates wanting to practise in the UK. The tribunal heard that the initial concerns in Yaghmaei’s case arose after a PLAB 2 exam day on February 15, 2019, when a General Medical Council member of staff found a folder left at the Clinical Assessment Centre containing a large volume of information about the PLAB exam, with wording in the pages claiming copyright on behalf of Common Stations. The information was said to compromise the integrity of the examination for any candidate who had access to its contents before sitting the test, and was escalated for investigation within the GMC.
The investigation drew on statements from former Common Stations students: testimonials published on the company’s website and Facebook groups in which students said they had known the wording of the exam and the answers before going in. One wrote that “all the stations were exactly word by word the same as we were taught”; another that “he spoon-fed all of us; he told us exactly what we needed to know for the exam.” Others commented that they were taught “exactly what came in the exam,” adding “this exam cannot be made any easier as Dr hamed has made it.”
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Struck off by the medical tribunal. An MPTS tribunal found the PLAB tutor distributed confidential exam information to her students through her teaching, knowing it would help them cheat, and erased her from the medical register.
The tribunal found the allegations of distributing confidential information and teaching materials proved against Yaghmaei: that material, created from information about the PLAB 2 exam elicited from former candidates, was used to teach Common Stations students, and the tribunal found it was designed to give them an unfair advantage — in the GMC’s own assessment, “it is designed to enable candidates to cheat.” It was denied on her behalf that Dr Yaghmaei created training material that would enable students to cheat, but the tribunal found the distribution of information through her teaching proved. Her teaching delivered specific information about the exam’s stations to students in her classes, the case against her established, drawing on the same body of confidential material at the heart of the company’s case.
Chloe Fairley, counsel for the GMC, told the hearing that helping students cheat using confidential exam information showed a “flagrant disregard” for the professional standards under which doctors must operate, and that both Yaghmaei and the company’s director Hamed Salehi should have acted with “honesty and integrity” rather than enabling PLAB candidates to cheat — with a risk to patient safety if doctors were not genuinely being tested. Unlike Salehi, Yaghmaei had stopped working for Common Stations in March 2019, when the GMC first raised concerns about the company’s course material, and had not taught for the company since. The tribunal nonetheless found the allegations of distributing information and teaching materials proved against her, and she was struck off the register as of September 30, 2026.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The outcome, reported nationally and in Essex in October 2026, closed a regulatory arc that had begun with the folder found in the exam centre in February 2019. The tribunal’s findings framed the conduct from the examiner’s side: confidential candidate debriefs had been converted, through the academy’s teaching materials, into advance knowledge of the exact stations candidates would face. The public record now includes both the students’ own testimonials — published on Common Stations’ website and Facebook groups, describing word-for-word exam predictability — and the tribunal’s conclusion that the tutor who delivered that teaching did so knowing what the material was.
Current Status
Yaghmaei, struck off as of September 30, 2026, is erased from the medical register and cannot practise medicine in the UK. She has not worked for Common Stations since March 2019, when the company first came under GMC suspicion. The erasure was determined alongside that of the company’s director, Hamed Salehi, whose advertising claims and elicitation of confidential content the tribunal found proved in the same case.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Yaghmaei’s removal from the register ends her UK medical career and permanently records the tribunal’s finding that she taught from leaked exam content while presenting it as her own work. The case stands as the precedent for tutors in the private PLAB-prep industry: the tribunal accepted that responsible course providers can prepare candidates lawfully, but drew the line at materials built from confidential information obtained from prior candidates, and treated teaching from such material — even after leaving the company — as conduct incompatible with registration. For the GMC, the case began as an exam-security incident and ended with the register shedding both the operator and the instructor of the academy involved.