A “crime boss” who illegally dealt more than £3.7m-worth of prescription-only drugs has been jailed after more than a decade on the run.
Staffordshire Police said Mark Robert Witchell, 61, was sentenced to 10 years in prison at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court on March 3 after admitting a “string of offences relating to luxury car thefts and online drug dealing”.
Witchell was charged in 2011, it added, but failed to show at his committal hearing and “fled to Brazil for the next 14 years”.
“Sophisticated” supply chain
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) then discovered that Witchell had been running a “sophisticated online drugs and medicine supply chain” between 2013 and 2015, police said, and had tasked three people in the UK with selling the drugs.
The scheme generated around £3.7m, and these profits were transferred to Witchell’s accounts in Mauritius under the company “Next Day Pharmacy Solutions”.
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The MHRA said Witchell’s offences involved the unlawful supply of Class B controlled drug codeine, and Class C controlled drugs alprazolam, diazepam, tramadol, zolpidem and zopiclone.
It added that the group illegally sold prescription-only medicines, including erectile dysfunction tablets Cialis and Levitra, as well as a “range of unauthorised medicinal products” including the unlicensed erectile dysfunction drugs Kamagra, Apcalis and Aurogra.
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Police said the enterprise “came crashing down” when Witchell was arrested at Holyhead Port in Wales last August. Three of the people he had ordered to sell the drugs had already been sentenced in March 2023.
The MHRA’s Criminal Enforcement Unit (CEU) had also taken the “rare step” of seeking extradition for the first time in the regulator’s history, and “work was ongoing to extradite” Witchell to the UK at the time of his return.
“Nowhere to hide”
The head of the MHRA’s CEU Andy Morling said the case “involved the large-scale illegal supply of powerful controlled drugs and unauthorised medicines, putting the public at serious risk of harm”.
“The fact that Witchell spent a decade overseas thinking he had evaded justice makes this result all the more significant,” he added.
“These crimes damage and destroy lives, and this case sends a clear message that there is nowhere to hide for those who seek to profit from medicines trafficking.”
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Staffordshire Police’s detective constable Gareth Reynolds said Witchell’s enterprise was a “highly sophisticated criminal operation” that “generated millions of pounds by profiting from other people’s vulnerability and belongings”.
“While Witchell may have spent 14 years on the run, it is our evidence and the action of everyone involved in this investigation which has ensured that he was not able to escape his offending, no matter how hard he tried,” he added.
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It comes after a pharmacy technician was jailed for more than six years for sneaking drugs and SIM cards into the prison she worked at.
Police said the 61-year-old had abused her position of trust “to smuggle dangerous drugs and illicit items” into HMP Bristol.
