Fake Viagra manufacturer jailed

A bogus doctor who ran Britain’s biggest counterfeit Viagra factory was jailed for five-and-a-half years today.

Allen Valentine’s “sophisticated” international operation, which also churned out steroids and cartons of potentially dangerous anti-anxiety pills, risked the health of the public and is believed to have made him millions.

In fact, just 24 hours before he was arrested, the father-of-two offered £1.25m (€1.8m) cash for a palatial mansion in one of the country’s most sought-after areas and arranged delivery of a new Jeep Cherokee.

London’s Harrow Crown Court heard the two-year plus enterprise, based in Wembley and backed by a “satellite” office and warehouse complex in Watford, left police in no doubt what they were dealing with.

Apart from being the largest operation of its kind so far found in Britain, they believed they had “smashed one of the largest illegal drug and pharmaceutical production operations in Europe” with a potential daily output of 500,000 tablets.

Steven Perian, prosecuting, said the evidence also revealed significant “connections” with India – where much of his equipment and base chemicals were bought – and the Far East.

Valentine, 44, of Kynaston Wood, Harrow, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply Class C drugs between January 1, 2001 and April 21 this year, as well as two similar charges involving contraventions of the Trade Marks Act and Medicines Act.

Passing sentence Judge Barrington Black told the drugs producer, a former sales rep for Viagra maker Pfizer, that he had traded on people’s need for a “normal life”.

He said “considerable” sums were invested by pharmaceutical companies to develop products in a “controlled and safe” way.

“The public are entitled to rely upon their study and intense supervision for medicine and drugs production.

“That reliance and faith is supplied by the regulations and the laws which Parliament provides for the protection of the public.

“It is a serious matter when the public are hoodwinked to the extent that such products, although structurally akin to the correct ones, are being produced in an environment without the necessary precautions... in a makeshift and potentially dangerous manner.”

He continued: “We are not talking about feeding the public appetite with just any old consumable, but items containing drugs, the misapplication of which can be dangerous.

“Viagra and diazepam are no longer the subject of jokes. They are for many people the constituents to restore normality to the value of living.”

The judge told Valentine he would not only be jailed for five years for the three conspiracies but would have to serve an additional six months outstanding from a breached suspended sentence imposed for 14 offences of selling medicines without a license.

Also imprisoned was his right-hand man Davin Pattni, 27, of Beverley Gardens, Stanmore, Middlesex, who got three years after pleading guilty to two of the conspiracy counts.

A third defendant, Paul Austin, 40, of Hampden Road, Harrow – regarded by police as a low level “gopher” – received an 18-month sentence suspended for two years for one of the conspiracy charges he had admitted.