Kyle Enos bought an industrial chemical on the dark web which is banned for human consumption in the UK and used it to make illegal ‘diet pills’ which he sold online
Kyle Enos(Image: Tarian)
A man used an industrial chemical bought from China on the dark web to make illegal and dangerous ‘diet pills’, a court has heard. Kyle Enos sold the pills to dieters around the UK and overseas, disguising the packages as harmless vitamin tablets.
Cardiff Crown Court heard the ‘diet tablets’ were made with 2,4-Dinitrophenol – or DNP – an industrial chemical that is poisonous to humans and which is banned for human consumption in the UK. The chemical can cause death as well as other serious physical side-effects.
At the time he was making and selling the pills the defendant had only been out of prison for a matter of months after serving a lengthy sentence for supplying the powerful opioid fentanyl.
The court heard Enos would purchase the pure form sodium salt of 2,4-Dinitrophenol on the dark web from China. He then mixed the orange powder with various cutting agents and used a pill press in his bedroom to manufacture the tablets.
The defendant advertised the pills – and other regulated medications – on a website he had created, and took payments in cryptocurrencies.
The court heard Enos received orders via email and shipped the pills – disguised as vitamins and minerals – to customers around the UK and internationally as far afield as Hawaii and Australia.
A batch of the chemical being mixed with cutting agents(Image: Tarian)
The 33-year-old was arrested in July last year when officers from Tarian, the regional organised crime unit for southern Wales, raided his home and found more than two kilos of DNP along with a pill press. The raid followed information received from the National Crime Agency. For the latest court reports sign up to our crime newsletter
Kyle Enos, formerly of Newport but now of Station Road, Maesteg, had previously pleaded guilty to importing, acquiring or using a regulated substance without licence; supplying a regulated substance to the public without a licence, supplying a regulated poison by a person other than a pharmacist; and five counts of failing to comply with a serious crime prevention order when he appeared in the dock for sentencing.
The pill press Enos used to make the tablets(Image: Tarian)
In 2018 the defendant was convicted of importing, supplying, and exporting “significant amounts” of the Class A drug fentanyl and sentenced to eight years in prison.
That offending involved Enos – using the online pseudonym “sovietbear” – purchasing the synthetic opioid from labs in China, mixing it with other substances, and selling it to customers around the world using the dark web.
Such was the potency of the drug the defendant was selling police went through his contacts list following his arrest and found four people on the database had died, though it could not be proved that the fentanyl supplied by Enos was related to their deaths.
Among thd deaths were those of 23-year-old university student Jack Barton, who died in Cardiff in January, 2017, and Aaron Rees, aged 34, from Ammanford who was found dead in March, 2017.
As well as being handed a lengthy jail term Enos was made subject of a serious crime prevention order which, among other things, banned him from selling products online and banned him from accessing the dark web.
The DNP offending put him in breach of that order. The defendant had only been out of prison for a matter of months following the fentanyl conviction when he began dealing in the illegal diet pills.
With a discount for his guilty pleas the defendant was sentenced to three years in prison. He will serve up to half the sentence in custody before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community.
Speaking after the sentencing, detective constable Kieran Morris of Tarian said Enos was caught thanks to a “proactive partnership investigation” involving the National Crime Agency, the National Food Crime Unit, the Ministry of Defence, HM Prison and Probation Service, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority, and South Wales Police.
He said: “The swift arrest of Enos and the removal of these poisonous diet pills from the open market was our utmost priority. Enos was supplying the pills with no safety precautions in place, and no advice on dosages.
“This could have led to buyers becoming extremely ill or even dying. Tarian regional organised crime unit are committed to safeguarding members of the public not only within our region, but across the United Kingdom and beyond. The sentence handed down to Enos today should serve as a warning to others engaging in similar criminality.”
The head of the National Crime Agency’s prisons and lifetime management unit, Alison Abbott, said crime prevention orders were a “powerful tool” to help prevent offenders from continuing their criminality when they came out of prison, and she said the case of Enos should serve as a warning to others that the agency would “actively monitor all those who are subject to such orders” when they are in the community.