UK men sentenced to prison for selling counterfeit drugs

Two men have been sentenced to prison at Oxford Crown Court, UK for supplying unlicensed drugs.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) had earlier carried out an investigation into the matter.

The men, Gediminas and Vytautas Staskevicius, were scheduled to go on trial between May and July 2015, but pleaded guilty to all charges before these dates.

Gediminas has been sentenced to 16 months in prison, as well as 120 hours unpaid work. He was also ordered to pay £1,500 ($1,900).

Vytautas has been sentenced to eight months in prison and is under a curfew between the hours of 9pm and 7am for two months.

The MHRA began investigating in May 2015 after the agency received information that suspected illegal medicines were delivered to Gediminas’ address.

Then, in July, enforcement officers from the MHRA entered the men’s residence, where they found almost 470,000 tablets of unlicensed erectile dysfunction medication, counterfeit medicines, as well as the pain medication tramadol.

The officers also found £6,000 in cash along with electronic records of medicines trading, which included customer details.

Alastair Jeffery, head of enforcement for the MHRA, said: “There is no way of knowing whether they are acceptably safe. There are also no guarantees as to what unlicensed medicines contain; there may be impurities or incorrect ingredients which affect their safety and performance.”

He added: “We will continue to target criminals supplying illegal medical products and raise awareness of the harm fake medicines cause.”