Burglars jailed for theft of Mounjaro worth £1m

Three burglars have been jailed after stealing nearly £1m worth of the weight loss drug Mounjaro from a distribution site.

Mark Harding, 55, Robert Townsend, 59 and Peter Costello, 44, carried out the "highly organised" and "sophisticated" burglary at Phoenix Healthcare Distribution in St Albans, Hertfordshire, on 24 January this year.

Police said the three men had broken into the unit through an air-conditioning duct, with their actions captured on CCTV footage played to St Albans Crown Court.

Judge Jonathan Mann KC said: "I have no doubt in concluding that a great deal of money was made as an effect of the distribution of the Mounjaro."

The haul of weight-loss drugs - worth a total of £944,544 - has still not been found.

Costello and Townsend, both from Sutton, and Harding from Feltham, in south-west London, were all charged with burglary after their arrest on 11 February.

Harding and Townsend also admitted to possession of criminal property after being found with thousands of pounds secreted away in their homes.

About £35,000 in cash was found in a picnic basket in Harding's wardrobe, while £19,900 was found behind an extractor fan in Townsend's home, the court heard.

CCTV played in court showed Costello and Harding, both clad in black, moving moving quickly through the site and taking boxes of the drug from a refrigerated area.

The defendants left and returned for more boxes less than two hours later.

The court heard Townsend had stayed outside as a "lookout" and had "scouted out" the site a week earlier.

Prosecuting, Harrie Austin-Jones said "there was advanced targeting and scoping of the building" which meant they knew how to circumvent the alarms.

They also sprayed black paint on some of the CCTV cameras, the court heard.

On behalf of Harding, Graham Logan argued that he "didn't know the full extent of what was involved", and sought to minimise the sophistication of the burglary.

However, Judge Mann said "it belies common sense" that any of them did not know what they were getting themselves into.

All three defendants had previous convictions, with Costello and Harding both prosecuted for other burglaries in the last decade.

Each was jailed for five years and three months for burglary, with Townsend and Harding receiving nine-month concurrent sentences for the criminal property charge.

Sophia Malik, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said: "This was a carefully planned burglary involving high-value pharmaceutical products.

"The defendants went to significant lengths to avoid being caught, but the evidence gathered through phone location data, automatic number plate recognition records and CCTV clearly linked them with the offences."

Det Sgt Will Daglish, of Hertfordshire Police, said: "This was a very serious crime – weight-loss drugs must be stored correctly and are dangerous if they are not administered in the right way.

"By breaking into the fridges storing the Mounjaro drug, their actions posed a serious health risk to the public.

"This was evidently a pre-planned and calculated burglary, and they will now serve several years behind bars."

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