Mark Robert Witchell, 61, from Nantwich, Cheshire, went on the run in South America for 14 years.
Mark Robert Witchell (Picture: Staffordshire Police)
A criminal offense boss who fled to Brazil for 14 years has been jailed after police smashed his multi-million-pound operation. Mark Robert Witchell, 61, organised automotive thefts in Staffordshire from 2003 to 2006, totalling over £280,000, through the use of rent buy agreements to amass high-value automobiles, together with Mercedes and Porsche fashions.
Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court docket heard that three of the automobiles had been transferred to Spain, and in 2011, Witchell was charged however fled to Brazil to evade justice. The Medicines and Healthcare Merchandise Regulatory Company (MHRA) then discovered Witchell had run a web based medicine and medication provide chain from 2013 to 2015, directing three individuals within the UK to promote the medicine and making £3.7m in income.
The cash was transferred to Witchell’s accounts in Mauritius below the corporate Subsequent Day Pharmacy Options, however he was lastly arrested after coming into Britain through Holyhead Port in North Wales in August 2025.
He has now admitted 5 counts of theft, three of transferring/eradicating legal property, cash laundering, supplying Class B and Class C medicine -codeine, alprazolam, diazepam, tramadol, zolpidem and zopiclone – illegally promoting prescription-only medicines, and promoting unauthorised medicines.
Witchell, initially of Nantwich, Cheshire, was sentenced to a complete of 10 years in jail on Tuesday, March 3.
Staffordshire Police described his offending as a “extremely refined legal operation.”
“Circumstances like this present the size that organised crime can attain.
“It’s a enterprise which preys on the weak in native communities and one thing which we’re working robustly to determine and act in opposition to each single day in Staffordshire.”
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