Bloke jailed over Breaking Bad-style £1million drug ring run from his mother’s pharmacy

A pharmacist has been jailed over a £1million prescription drugs racket which saw him supply thousands of packs of drugs illegally.

Balkeet Khaira, 37, who worked at his mother’s pharmacy, used the business in Sutton Coldfield as a front for the fraud. When he was eventually sprung, he pretended to be her and forged documents.

The pharmacist had previously pleaded guilty to five charges of supplying a controlled drug of class C and was jailed for 12 months reports Birmingham Live.

Breaking Bad fans will spot the similarities to the cult US TV show in which a former chemist begins dealing the highly addictive crystal meth.

Simon Hunka, prosecuting, told Birmingham Crown Court: “Khaira has been a qualified pharmacist since August 2008. He has been working from the family business for a number of years.

“On June 22, 2017 the General Pharmaceutical Council received information a particular pharmacy was supplying large quantities of prescription only medication without prescriptions for them.

“That triggered an investigation.”

However when medical authorities emailed the business, Khaira pretended to be his mother telling them there was “nothing to be seen here”.

Even when the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency took over the investigation, he provided them with false information.

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Inquiries revealed the pharmacist had ordered a whopping 30,000 packets of five different kinds of drugs but only 1,396 could be matched with prescriptions.

The rest were destined for the black market.

“These drugs are in high demand and can command high prices on the black market,” said Mr Hunka.

Officers arrested the defendant and his mother at the pharmacy in February 2018. Khaira later told police he had been supplying the drugs to a group of people after meeting someone at a gym.

Conceding some of the money he received went into his account rather than the pharmacy till, Khaira suggested the drugs would be collected by a “facilitator”.

Mr Hunka said analysis of the defendant’s bank account revealed unidentified cash credits of just over £59,000.

At the ruling, Judge Heidi Kubic QC told him: “These are serious offences.

“For a period of 18 months, between February 2016 and August 2017, you allowed five different types of addictive class C drugs to be diverted on to the black market in significant quantities.

“Some 29,000 packets were so diverted.

“The pharmacy was run by your mother and your activities caused her to be arrested when she had done nothing wrong.”

Ekwal Tiwana, defending, claimed: “Serious threats were made to him and his family at the beginning of him committing these offences.

“He was approached by a person he knew from the gym who asked him for some sleeping tablets. The defendant foolishly supplied them.”

He said, from then on, things snowballed and continued: “He was then offered hush money and he took that foolishly.”

Regarding the repercussions for Khaira’s mother, Mr Tiwana said it had taken 30 years for her to build up the business and now her reputation had been completely tarnished.