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The Manchester Crown Court on Friday (9 December) sentenced three men, Cleave Lewis (35) and brothers, Denis Sutherland (58) and David Sutherland (59), to a total of three years in jail after they pleaded guilty to the illegal sale and supply online of prescription-only medicines and controlled Class B and Class C drugs, worth more than £1.5m. They were found in possession of nearly 1.3m tablets of prescription-only drugs, including powerful sleeping pills, painkillers and anti-anxiety meds, when officers from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Greater Manchester Police searched their residential homes and business premises in October 2017. Following investigations by the agency, they also pleaded guilty to illegally making these medicines available online on three different websites for the public to purchase without prescriptions. The officials also recovered controlled medicines, over half a million (525,737) erectile dysfunction, slimming and herbal tablets, with an estimated value of approximately £500k, from them.

A man has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for illegally importing and distributing unlicensed medicines from India, the Middle East, and the Far East. Antoine Christopher Kolias, 31, received his sentence at Southwark Crown Court on 28 June after being found guilty of criminal activities in May. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency's (MHRA) Criminal Enforcement Unit (CEU) led the investigation, dubbed Operation Bentley. Kolias was discovered to be acting both as a distributor for an established unlicensed medicines dealer and running his own illicit business. He was involved in the sale of sildenafil citrate, the active ingredient in Viagra, as well as Class C drugs including tramadol, zopiclone, and pregabalin between 2018 and 2019, and again between 2020 and 2021.