£165k lethal drugs sold by mail order
THREE men are facing jail for selling potentially lethal drugs over the internet.
Lee Childs, 45, Jake Levene, 22, and Mandy Lowther, 21, sold their wares on the dark web under the names UKBargains, making £163,474 in just five months.
They sold fentanyl – which is 100 times stronger than morphine – and carfentanyl – which is 100 times stronger again – to customers as far away as Australia, Canada, Argentina and Singapore.
Fentanyl is prescribed for severe pain relief while carfentanyl has no medical use for humans.
The chemicals are so toxic that in February 2017 Lowther was admitted to the Leeds accident and emergency unit in a coma caused by a brain injury linked to exposure to the drugs. He recovered and carried on supplying the deadly drugs, the National Crime Agency said in a statement. Their site on the dark web ran the disclaimer: ‘I will not give any information about fentanyl or its analogues as the customer should already have (researched) these chemicals before even contemplating using them as they are extremely dangerous & lethal in the wrong hands.’
When officers from the National Crime Agency and West Yorkshire Police raided their processing plant in an industrial unit in Morley, Leeds, they found 677g of pure carfentanyl, equivalent to millions of lethal doses, as well as fentanyl, cutting agents, scales and a production line.
Greg McKenna, regional head of investigations at the NCA, said: ‘There have been more than 120 UK deaths relating to fentanyl or carfentanyl since December 2016. We have taken out a main supplier.’ The trio will be sentenced in Leeds on September 7.