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Gang leader jailed for back-garden fake medicines business

Source: Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) published on this website Monday 31 March 2025 by Jill Powell

A man who co-ordinated a multi-million-pound fake medicines operation, including counterfeit versions of the powerful anti-anxiety pill Xanax, has today (Wednesday 27 March 2025) been jailed for eight years.

Brian Pitts – 30 of Bilston – pleaded guilty at a previous hearing to conspiracy to supply Class C controlled drugs; breaching a trademark for a medication, exporting class C controlled drugs; and laundering the proceeds of crime.

He was sentenced along with nine other defendants at Wolverhampton Crown Court. Brian Pitts was also issued with a Serious Crime Prevention Order by the court which will prohibit him from obtaining the equipment and substances to make pills and allow law enforcement to more readily monitor his activity with financial accounts and on the internet.

The group – many of whom were from the same extended family - operated from a base in the Black Country manufacturing in make-shift pill production factories in garages and garden sheds, using industrial pill presses and active ingredients imported from China.
 
Brian Pitts – known online as Milkman - and father-in-law Lee Lloyd were the main players, co-ordinating the production and sales of counterfeit tablets online from their base in Thailand. Lloyd’s partner Katie Harlow was also involved in laundering the criminal profits and was sentenced to two years and one month imprisonment. It is estimated that more than £4 million worth of drugs were sold to customers on the Dark Web, primarily the market in the USA, using Bitcoin to receive payment.
 
The wider group included Mark Bailey and Deborah Bellingham, whose addresses in Wolverhampton and Tipton were used as manufacturing sites. The rest of the group - Kyle Smith, Scott Tonkinson, Anthony Pitts, Jordan Pitts and Bladen Roper – assisted with the running of the business.

Packages of tablets were intercepted both in the UK and US, which involved close working with US authorities. The packages were found to contain counterfeit Xanax and had return addresses related to the defendants - one intercepted parcel had Brian Pitt’s fingerprints on packaging on the inside.

Phone content showed accounts used by Brian Pitts, Harlow and Lloyd had control of the Dark Web marketplaces and were linked to Bitcoin and other crypto assets used to buy counterfeit Xanax.
 
Brian Pitts, Harlow and Lloyd were all arrested when they returned from Thailand in August 2019 with designer clothes and Rolex watches in their luggage.

Jonathan Kelleher from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “This was a case of fake medicines being produced on an industrial scale, with significant potential harm to the public.

“These drugs should only be prescribed by a doctor and anyone buying them on the Dark Web, produced in a back-garden shed, has no clue what they are taking. Brian Pitts and his associates were not concerned with these dangers and only saw a money-making opportunity.

“The CPS worked closely with the West Midlands Regional Organised Crime Unit, including experts in cyber-crime given that much of this offending took place online, to prosecute these organised criminals and protect the public from this harmful trade.”
 
The CPS Proceeds of Crime Division are pursuing confiscation proceedings against the defendants to remove any available criminal benefit from this enterprise.

The role of internal audit identifying early warning signs across the public sector

Source: The Government Internal Audit Agency published on Friday 28 March 2025 by Jill Powell

The Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) has published a report highlighting how public sector bodies fail to grasp the significance of emerging red flags and fail to act on these early warning signals.

Their report, ‘Early Warning Signs in Public Sector Bodies’ calls for public sector bodies to put in place the processes needed to recognise these early warning signs and to facilitate a culture where speaking up about concerns and learning from mistakes are seen as a personal duty and valued by everyone in the organisation.

The report includes insights from the Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA) Chief Executive, Harriet Aldridge, who noted that it is part of the role of internal audit to support government departments and ALBs to identify potential problems earlier, spotting issues sooner, and working with organisations to develop a course of action to mitigate and resolve these issues faster.

Responding to the report findings, Harriet said,

“A robust internal audit approach should help to identify issues upstream. Earlier resolution ensures better outcomes for the public, saving taxpayers’ money and leading to the more effective delivery of public services,”

The Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA) provides independent and objective internal audit and assurance services for government departments and ALBs.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life’s report recognised GIAA’s proactive approach to risk management, particularly with the development of artificial intelligence (AI) to support the real-time checking of data against risk criteria.

The Committee also recognised GIAA’s leading role in sharing learning through our wider cross-government Insight Programme.

For further information on the report ‘Early Warning Signs in Public Sector Bodies’ by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, please visit the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

Sexual predator’s sentence extended after intervention by Solicitor General

Source: Attorney General’s Office published on this site Wednesday 26 March 2025 by Jill Powell

A sexual predator who raped a 10-year-old he groomed on social media has had his sentence increased after the Solicitor General, Lucy Rigby KC MP, intervened.

The Court of Appeal increased Ryan Sutton’s sentence by three years after his case was referred by the Solicitor General under the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) scheme.

The court heard that Ryan Sutton (24), from Worcester, met the 10-year-old victim on social media in March 2023.

Ryan Sutton groomed the victim with flattery and offers to spend money on them. Messages were often sexual in nature and the pair exchanged photographs. Between 11 and 23 April, Ryan Sutton and the victim spoke on Facetime 225 times.

On 23 April 2023, Ryan Sutton travelled from his home to meet the victim in Finedon before he raped them. Ryan Sutton originally ran off when he was spotted with the victim before police arrested him, where they found condoms in his bag.

The Solicitor General Lucy Rigby KC MP said:

“The offender groomed and abused a child. His crimes were truly abhorrent, and the court has quite rightly increased his sentence. My thoughts today are with the victim of this offender’s actions, and her family. This case should serve as a strong warning that this Government will take all possible action to protect women and girls from any form of abuse.”

Sutton was charged with one count of rape of a child under 13, one count of assault by penetration of a child under 13, one count of meeting a child following sexual grooming, one count of sexual communication with a child, and one count of sexual assault of a child under 13.

He was sentenced at Northampton Crown Court on 19 December 2024 to six years imprisonment with a licence extension of 12 months.

This sentence was increased to nine years’ imprisonment with a licence extension of 12 months on 12 March 2025 at the Court of Appeal.

Sadistic online harm groups putting people at unprecedented risk, warns the NCA

Source: National Crime Agency (NCA) published on this website Thursday 27 March 2025 by Jill Powell

The Director General of the National Crime Agency has warned of a “deeply concerning” trend of online networks of predominantly teenage boys, dedicated to inflicting harm and committing a range of criminality.

Graeme Biggar is calling on everyone - from law enforcement, to parents and carers, education professionals, and industry - to play their part in reducing the risk from “sadistic and violent online gangs”.

The warning comes as the NCA launches its National Strategic Assessment, an annual report that outlines the serious and organised crime threats facing the UK.

These online forums or communities – referred to in the Assessment as “Com networks” – see offenders collaborate or compete to cause harm across a broad spectrum of criminality - both on and offline - including cyber, fraud, extremism, serious violence, and child sexual abuse.

Known reports of this emerging threat increased six-fold in the UK from 2022-2024. NCA analysts estimate that thousands of users – offenders and victims – based in the UK and other western countries have exchanged millions of messages online relating to sexual and physical abuse.

Although adults are involved in these online communities, of particular concern is that offenders are predominantly teenage boys that often share sadistic and misogynistic material, and have been seen to target those their own age or younger.

Offenders include a new generation of young, English-speaking cyber criminals who work together to execute data breaches and commit fraud, launch malware or ransomware attacks, and use social engineering and grooming techniques on victims.

The NCA and UK law enforcement have identified a number of cases in which girls, some as young as 11, have been coerced into seriously harming or sexually abusing themselves, siblings or pets.

In some instances, victims have been groomed into offending themselves.

NCA Director General Graeme Biggar said:

“This is a hugely complex and deeply concerning phenomenon. Young people are being drawn into these sadistic and violent online gangs where they are collaborating at scale to inflict, or incite others to commit, serious harm.

“These groups are not lurking on the dark web, they exist in the same online world and platforms young people use on a daily basis. It is especially concerning to see the impact this is having on young girls who are often groomed into hurting themselves and in some cases, even encouraged to attempt suicide.

“The NCA is coordinating UK law enforcement’s response to this emerging threat. We are collaborating with policing, tech companies, safeguarding agencies and psychologists to better understand how young people become offenders and safeguard victims.

“Operating online clearly makes these offenders feel protected and out of reach but that is absolutely not the case. There have already been convictions, we and partners have made arrests in the UK and overseas, and further investigations are ongoing.

“I’d encourage parents and carers to have regular conversations with their child about what they do online, and ensure they know they have your support should they need it.”

The online landscape of these networks is vast, with many groups having a different focus such as cybercrime or inflicting physical harm. However, membership is loose and fluid which leads to the range of different criminality being committed by individual offenders.

Last month following an NCA investigation, Richard Ehiemere was convicted of fraud and indecent images of children (IIOC) offences, committed when he was just 17 and linked to a prolific online harms group.

In January 19-year-old Cameron Finnigan was jailed for assisting suicide, possession of IIOC, a terror offence, and criminal damage, following an investigation by Counter Terror Policing South East (CTPSE).

Evidence suggests that offenders are motivated by gaining notoriety and status, which can be achieved based on the harm they inflict and the depravity of the content they share. These networks share content relating to a broad and diverse range of extreme belief systems that they use to justify violence.

Sexual gratification can also be a motivating factor and in some cases, offenders are finding opportunities to profit from their criminality directly, or by selling material to others. The NCA is engaging with experts and academics to improve our understanding of motivations of offenders in this area and what can be done to deter them.

Also common across networks is the use of coercion and extortion tactics. Offenders manipulate victims by grooming them or convincing them that they are in a relationship. As with other types of grooming, this leads to victims not recognising themselves as such, or being too scared to come forward, which likely contributes to the underreporting of this offending.

Jess Phillips, Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, said:

“The scale of child sexual abuse in this report is absolutely horrific and drives home the need for a co-ordinated response to tackle this global issue. We have seen the heartbreaking impact of crimes such as grooming and sextortion on victims around the world—many of them children who have been blackmailed and manipulated into sharing images of themselves, which has devastatingly led to some children taking their own lives.

“This is why this government is using every lever at our disposal to make the UK a safer place for children online, including implementation of the Online Safety Act which has some of the strongest laws in the world to protect children.

“My message to parents is to have open conversations with your children and to seek support if you are concerned about child sexual abuse.My message to tech companies is simple: this is your responsibility too. You must ensure your platforms are safe for children, so that we can protect the most vulnerable and put predators behind bars.”

Assistant Chief Constable Alastair Simpson, national policing lead for Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse & Undercover Online, said:

“The growth of Com networks that incite and encourage children and vulnerable adults towards acts of self-harm, suicide and violence are hugely concerning.

“The role of undercover online officers is vital in this space, and my message to anyone who is exploiting children online: remember that there is no space where criminals operate that we cannot go, and investigations into these networks have already begun.

“Policing will always play its part, but social media providers have a clear role to play in monitoring and regulating their platforms to root out this abhorrent criminal behaviour and make all online spaces safe for children and adults.

“I would encourage anyone who has been a victim of this type of crime to report it to police, you will be met with empathy and respect, and there are organisations that can support you.”

Children and young people are better protected when they have adults around them who they feel they can trust, talk to and won’t be blamed by. Regular, open and honest conversations create environments where young people can disclose concerns.

Education professionals can find a range of lesson plans and resources to protect under 18s from online sexual abuse at: www.ceopeducation.co.uk/professionals

Parents and carers can find information, advice and resources to use at home with their children at: www.ceopeducation.co.uk/parents

Under 18s concerned about their own sexual behaviour or thoughts can find help and advice at: www.shorespace.org.uk

Non-consensual intimate images set to be seized from abusers to protect welfare of victims

Source: Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) published on this website Tuesday 25 March 2025 by Jill Powell

Offenders who share intimate images without consent could expect to forfeit those devices as guidance for prosecutors is updated. 

Changes have been made to Communications Offences guidance prompting prosecutors to make better use of deprivation orders in cases where intimate images have been taken or shared without the victim’s consent.  

The update asks prosecutors to promote the courts’ powers to deprive offenders of their devices. 

The orders seek to better help protect victims from being re-victimised or traumatised by their abuser regaining access to the images after a prosecution. 

Kate Brown, Crown Prosecution Lead for Domestic Abuse, said:

“Victims who have had intimate images taken or shared without their consent should not have to face the prospect of those images being handed back to their abuser. We want people who commit these horrific crimes to feel the full extent of the law by removing their ability to continue to take gratification from this material.  The use of deprivation orders can help make sure the full extent of their offending is reflected in the charges and sentence imposed by the court. 

“The Crown Prosecution Service will continue to prosecute non-consensual intimate image abuse and support victims throughout.” 

Courts already have the power to deprive convicted offenders of non-consensual intimate images and videos. The new guidance reminds prosecutors of the importance of asking the court to exercise its powers to stop perpetrators retaining devices containing intimate images. 

The update has been made to the Communication Offences prosecution guidance with the aim of making sure prosecutors consider the use of deprivation orders early on in their case strategy, so the full extent of the offending is reflected in the charges and sentence imposed by the court.