Why IS the fat burning pill that’s killed 25 Britons and is so explosive it can blow up a building so easy to buy?
BERNARD REBELO was a friendly, polite resident of the apartment he rented in an upmarket Art Deco block in North-West London.
Although neighbours say they found his love of noisy superbikes and sports cars annoying at times, they had no real complaints.
With a Rolex glinting on his arm, he would wave and say ‘hello’ as he walked by the tennis courts and manicured lawns to the £500,000 flat he shared with his girlfriend, with whom he had a young daughter.
He was a fine example of a hard-working, upwardly mobile, thirtysomething professional doing well for himself, they assumed.
But little did they know that, inside, he was operating a multi-million-pound business which twisted the law to sell deadly so-called ‘diet pills’ to vulnerable people online. That some of these customers ended up dying was something of an occupational hazard.
More to the point, neither were they aware that he was storing barrel-loads of highly volatile, explosive compounds in his flat — as dangerous as TNT and enough to take out the entire building at any stage.
In June, Rebelo, 31, was jailed for seven years for manslaughter after an internet trail, following the death of a disturbed young woman, led to his flat in Harrow.
There, police found 25kg of DNP, an industrial chemical used in fertilisers, dyes, photography development and wood preservatives, which goes by the chemical name 2,4-dinitrophenol.
It is also famed for its fatburning properties — and the excruciatingly painful deaths it can cause in those who choose to swallow it.
It was the first time that anyone has been convicted of manslaughter after selling DNP pills to someone who died as a result. Eight of these pills, processed by Rebelo in his makeshift lab in Harrow, killed 21- year- old student Eloise Parry in April 2015.
The troubled young woman, who suffered from bulimia and had a borderline personality disorder, died ‘in the most horrendous way’, according to her family. The drug works by making the body convert energy into heat, leaving victims to ‘cook’ from the inside.
Rebelo was tracked down as her supplier using her internet purchase history.
As well as highlighting the tragic, needless end of another promising young life, the prosecution exposed the farcical way in which these dangerous drug manufacturers, and the internet companies that host their websites, cynically run rings around the law.
For though the death toll is rising (the National Poisons Information Service says there have been 25 deaths since 2007, including five in the first half of this year), its sale remains largely unregulated.
This is because it is not classified as a drug, unlike anabolic steroids (the ‘drug of choice’ for bodybuilders), but a poison, which, according to the Food Standards Agency (FSA), can be sold for legitimate ‘industrial purposes’.
It is, however, illegal to sell for human consumption, which means that most websites simply get round this by putting in a small disclaimer somewhere on a page.
It is classified as an explosive under UN regulations and the UK’s 2014 Explosives Act, yet it is left to the FSA and the limited budgets of local authority environmental health departments — who are normally tasked with inspecting restaurants — to bring about prosecutions.
For example, the quantity found in Rebelo’s flat should have triggered the National Counter Terrorism Security Office and bomb disposal squads. Instead, Harrow Council had to investigate.
Council leader Graham Henson was shocked at the lack of support the council received from police and the Crown Prosecution Service.
‘We were basically on our own — just a local council — using the same laws we use to go after a shop selling out-ofdate chicken,’ he said.
‘Except we were going after this guy’s very complex, very slick operation that packaged and sold this deadly chemical online, all around the world. We’re just not geared up for that.’
While Eloise’s grieving mother, Fiona, welcomed Rebelo’s conviction, she agreed not enough was being done to prosecute those who peddle DNP and too many were slipping through the net.
She blamed the huge, global — and largely untouchable — internet registrar companies that host websites such as his for not taking responsibility.
‘Ella wasn’t the first person to die from DNP and she won’t be the last,’ said Fiona. ‘ I’m not suggesting for one minute that we’ll ever completely stop it. But if they shut these websites down and keep shutting them down that would be a step forward.’
( Rebelo’s websites were hosted by the Canadian firm Tucows, one of the largest domain name registrars on the net, which has not replied to requests for a comment.)
As a chemistry teacher, Fiona, from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, knew about the dangers of DNP, but had no idea her daughter, who was in the middle of a families and childhood studies degree at Glyndwr University in Wrexham, had been buying capsules online.
Speaking after the inquest into Eloise’s death in July 2015, she said: ‘Eloise was an independent soul who was carving her way through life with difficulty, exploring the world and trying to make something of herself in the process. Living life to the full always involves taking risks. We weigh up the pros and cons and decide whether the risk is worth taking.
‘Eloise decided that even though she had been told DNP was dangerous, being slimmer was worth the risk.
‘ She was convinced the dangers were being exaggerated and, some days, she even thought she was being lied to about it. She was wrong.’
DNP was initially used during World War I in munitions until, in the 1930s, U. S. scientists discovered that it boosted metabolism and burned fat if swallowed.
It was sold as a diet pill until 1938, before gruesome side- effects started being experienced, including multiple organ failure, cataracts, hypothermia, nausea, muscle rigidity and cardiac arrest.
Professor Simon Thomas, director of the National Poisons Information Service (Newcastle Unit) at Public Health England, told Rebelo’s trial there is no safe dose of the ‘frightening’ substance, which kills between 15 to 17 per cent of all referred for medical treatment after taking it.
‘That is an enormous mortality,’ he said. ‘I cannot think of another poison which causes that amount.’ Previously used almost exclusively by male bodybuilders, he said that there had been a rise in the number of women taking it to lose weight.
Those who buy it are often desperate and that is something those selling this deadly chemical cynically exploit.
And it’s terrifyingly easy to get hold of. Indeed, the most cursory of internet searches brings up pages of websites selling DNP ‘slimming pills’ for around £70 for 100.
This newspaper even found it being sold on eBay, which
has since removed the sale. Andrea Petroczi, a professor of public health at Kingston University, who conducted the latest research into DNP, says that taking it is ‘ Russian roulette’, as ‘there is no way of knowing the effects’.
Other victims have included medical student Sarah Houston, 23, and bodybuilder Sean Cleathero, 28, in 2012; students Chris Mapletoft and Sarmad Alladin, both 18, in 2013; and bouncer Liam Willis, 24, and Beth Shipsey, 21, in 2017.
During Rebelo’s trial, the court heard how he lived a lavish lifestyle funded by his DNP business, which included a love of expensive watches, Louis Vuitton bags, Porsche and Corvette sports cars and regular holidays across Europe and the Americas with his girlfriend.
In addition to the flat, the couple also lived in a detached, £500,000 mock-Tudor threebedroom house near the Solent in Gosport, Hampshire.
Despite having no chemistry or pharmaceutical training, he sold many thousands of pills, using Bitcoin payments, via his
now-defunct websites, drmuscle pharmaceuticals. com and bionicpharmaceuticals.com.
He imported barrels of DNP from China and quickly began to rake in huge sums — with a £350 drum making £200,000.
When police raided his flat, they found piles of cash, as well DNP pill-making paraphernalia in his makeshift lab.
Rebelo, who admitted selling DNP, insisted they were not for human consumption. He told the court: ‘I did not expect anyone who bought it to eat it. It has numerous uses like pesticides, fertiliser and paint dye.’ Yet his websites all carried images of muscled and toned male and female figures, while recommending dosing information and links to DNP-related threads on bodybuilding forums.
His defence was dismissed by the jury. Sentencing him to seven years in prison, Judge Jeremy Donne, at Inner London Crown Court, said: ‘You indiscriminately supplied DNP, a highly toxic industrial chemical, via the internet.
‘You had no way of controlling who would purchase it and it was highly likely those with eating disorders, possibly even the very young and impressionable, would buy it.’
Sadly, until there is a change in the law, they continue to do so. Doug and Carole Shipsey,
Websites are running rings round the law ‘Taking DNP is like Russian roulette’
from Worcester, lost 21-year- old daughter Beth in February last year, after she took DNP.
Midwife and nurse Carole, who has three other children, said one of the most shocking things is how easy it is to purchase.
‘Beth’s arrived hidden in a DVD case with a foreign name on it,’ said Carole. ‘You just don’t think something you buy off the internet that arrives through your letter box could be that harmful.
‘ Part of me feels angry that it’s so easily available. It’s not publicised enough.’
Carole says Beth, who bought the tablets from the Ukraine, had suffered with mental health problems after being raped by an ex-boyfriend, who is now serving a prison sentence for his crimes.
But she believes that, thanks to counselling sessions, Beth had started to turn a corner and, like Eloise Parry’s mother Fiona, does not believe her daughter intended to take her own life.
‘Life was very hard for her, but she was beginning to see a future,’ said Carole. ‘She loved animals and was very passionate about animal rights. She was a talented photographer, too. I still have all the animals she rescued here — it’s my link to her. We have rabbits, dogs, cats, rats, turtles and a snake.’
Through tears, she adds: ‘Losing her has devastated our life. She was like the colour and, now the colour has gone, everything is bleak and I’m trying to carry on and keep strong, but it’s really difficult. We have life before Beth died and life after.
‘It’s like I’m a victim of crime and I will forever be punished.’ Her husband Doug, 53, a company director, cannot understand why DNP is not a regulated substance, particularly when considering how explosive and acutely toxic it is.
‘It should not be left to councils to investigate using food hygiene powers — it’s a crime because it’s a UN-classified explosive,’ he said. ‘Thirty pills are enough to blow a hole in the side of a plane. If this gets into the wrong hands, it doesn’t bear thinking about — why isn’t something being done to create criminal laws around it? It beggars belief that it is not classed as a drug.’
He said other countries, such as the U. S., France, Belgium and Germany, have all regulated it as a drug and Britain is lagging behind. ‘People just don’t know of the dangers. We need to constantly keep this in the public eye.’
In 2015, Interpol issued a warning to 190 police forces across the world about DNP, which it described as ‘illicit and potentially lethal’. Yet this has done little to dampen supplies.
It is bought by dealers such as Rebelo, often in powder form, from factories in countries including the Ukraine, Turkey and the U.S. It is then put into pills in underground labs, in unsterile conditions and with no accurate way for those taking it to know the dosage.
Cheryl Gillan, Conservative MP for Chesham and Amersham, the constituency where DNP victim Sarah Houston lived, is calling for it to be reclassified as a Class-C drug, which ‘would mean possession and supply would be a criminal offence’.
‘It’s a completely toxic substance and has caused misery and death to so many young people and their families and friends,’ she said.
Meanwhile, the FSA says it is working hard to reduce supply and demand yet, as many of the websites selling it are based abroad, they are outside its jurisdiction.
Additionally, as it is not classed as a drug, there is only so much that the FSA can do without the support of police and other crime-fighting agencies. But when asked about whether there were any plans to classify DNP and to regulate it as an explosive, a Government spokesman said that, as it is a poison, ‘it cannot be considered for control by the Advisory Council On The Misuse Of Drugs’.
In March this year, Vaidotas Gerbutavicius, 21, became one of the most recent casualties of DNP when he died just hours after taking it.
Though there has not yet been an inquest to establish the cause of death, his family have no doubt what killed him and are campaigning to get the law changed for DNP to be classified.
His father Andrius, 42, a construction engineer, who is married to Laura, 39, a quality controller, says his son lived just two miles from Rebelo’s flat and, although the origin of the pills he took is not known, believes he may have bought pills from him.
‘I don’t know why he took it, nor do I know what dosage,’ he said. ‘On the day he died, he telephoned me to say he felt ill after taking it and that he needed help, so I phoned 999. Four hours later, he was dead.’
Andrius, who moved to Britain 18 years ago from Lithuania, says that he does not want any family to have to go through the pain they have.
‘Before this, I had never heard of DNP. I had no idea such a thing existed in the world,’ he said.
‘ There have been so many deaths in recent years, but people will keep on dying unless the law is changed and the Government starts to effectively tackle the sale of this deadly substance. This cannot be allowed to continue.’
‘It beggars belief that it’s not been classed as a drug’