Man jailed for drug scam that cost Reckitt £2m
A CODEINE addict whose drug-swapping scam ended up costing Reckitt Benckiser £2.4m in a huge recall of Nurofen Plus packets was yesterday jailed for 18 months for causing a public nuisance.
Christopher McGuire sparked panic last August when strips of anti-psychotic drug Seroquel were found in packets of the pharmacy-only painkiller Nurofen Plus.
Reckitt spent £2.4m recalling drugs and trying to find the cause of the mix-up after a handful of customers in London reported the rogue products.
Two men complained of side effects after inadvertently taking Seroquel, and the MHRA medicine watchdog issued a safety alert. Four packets in south east London were found to have been tampered with.
A court heard that McGuire had been swapping his own schizophrenia medication into packets of Nurofen because he could not afford to pay for his 32 painkiller pills a day habit.
He tried to buy Nurofen Plus on a card that he knew would be declined, in order to swap over the pills and hand back the Nurofen packet containing different drugs.
McGuire, from Bromley in south London, was arrested in September after police traced the Seroquel drugs and he admitted his ruse.