A former bankrupt businessman who funded a luxury lifestyle by selling millions of pounds worth of fake Viagra over the internet will be sentenced today.
In three years Martin Hickman, 49, who drove a Bentley with a number-plate L13 RGE, made £3.4million profit by selling sex pills on his website, MSH World Traders.
It helped pay for a £2.5million riverside apartment in Chelsea, West London, property in the Spanish millionaires’ resort of Marbella and a four-bedroom farmhouse.
But investigators discovered that some of the pills he was buying from India and selling across Europe were fakes, made to look like the licensed Viagra product, and others were not legal to sell in the UK.
His website, which made a turnover of £6.1 million in just three years, also sold sex toys, herbal aphrodisiacs and pumps designed to increase penis size.
Hickman, originally from London, was charged with dealing in fake and unlicensed medicines and money laundering £1.4 million after an investigation by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority which began in 2005 and became one of the biggest cases in the agency’s history.
Hickman, who also drove a top-of-the-line Range Rover with a number plate bearing his initials, pleaded guilty to six counts at Southwark Crown Court.
MHRA investigators came across Hickman’s website during one of their routine patrols of the internet.
They raided his farmhouse home in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, where the business was based and seized company records and stockpiled drugs.
They found that Hickman kept money in bank accounts in Malta, the Cayman Islands and the Isle of Man and transferred funds through each account, and his local bank in the north-west, in a bid to launder them.
Despite the fact that he was under investigation in the following months Hickman continued to run the website even moving to office premises and taking on between 6 and 12 staff, said the MHRA.
The MHRA made a test purchase of pills from the site in 2006 and received counterfeit Viagra and the following year the Manchester Evening News made a second test purchase and were sent ‘Lovegra’ – a name for Kamagra, which is not licensed for sale in the UK.
Because the website was hosted in Germany the MHRA had to take out an injunction to shut the website down. But Hickman still continued to trade and in 2007 was jailed for three months for ignoring the injunction.
This was not the first time Hickman had fallen foul of the law when selling prescription drugs. In 1998 he was jailed for 10 months for conspiracy to trade in steroids.
He was made bankrupt after the court case but by 2003 had set up his new business, MSH World Traders, said the MHRA.
Mick Deats, MHRA Head of Enforcement, said: ‘We have people with no medical qualification whatsoever running websites and running multi-million pounds businesses. The misuse of these drugs can cause side-effects in those with high blood pressure and qualified practitioner would consider those factors before prescribing,
‘It is a really risky practice to turn to the internet for your medicines. People often use the internet to buy these drugs because they are too embarrassed to go to their doctor or because they wouldn’t be prescribed them. And if something goes wrong that could mean they are more reluctant to seek treatment.’
Hickman will be sentenced for one charge of money laundering of £1.4 million between September 1, 2003, two charges of supplying unlicensed Kamagra and Lovegra between April 21, 2005 and 6 May 2007, one charge of supplying counterfeit Viagra on March 6, 2006, one charge of advertising prescription-only drugs and one charge of possessing unlicensed drugs.