A VIAGRA counterfeiter was hit with a £1.2 million confiscation order after asset recovery agents heard he'd offered that amount in cash for a luxury home, London's Court of Appeal heard today.

In an example of the lengths the authorities will go to relieve criminals of their ill-gotten gains, Alan Valentine of Harrow Weald was hit with the order in October last year at Harrow Crown Court under the Proceeds of Crime Act and the Drug Trafficking Act 1994.

He was ordered to serve an additional seven years if he failed to come up with the sum, and today was challenging both the length of his default prison sentence and the sum involved.

But Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith, sitting with Lord Justice Scott Baker and Mr Justice Holland, dismissed the appeal.

The court heard Valentine, of Kynaston Wood, who also has an address in Talbots Lane, Watford, was handed a five-year prison sentence in October 2004 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to supply fake Diazepam.

He was also ordered to serve six months of an outstanding sentence.

He also admitted conspiracy to contravene the Trade Marks Act 1994, relating to fake viagra, and conspiracy to contravene the Medicines Act, relating to steroids.

In April 2004 officers had raided premises at the Wembley Commercial Centre and discovered a large scale industrial tablet press, a blister packaging machine and a drying machine.

The "factory" was capable of producing up to 15,000 tablets a minute.

Around 45kg of Nitrazepam material, large amounts of Diazepam tablets, anabolic steroids and many thousands of Viagra tablets were seized, while viagra ready for dispatch were found in Watford.

Judge Loraine-Smith said that the confiscation figure was based on the sheer scale of the production of drugs, and the fact that Valentine had made a cash offer for a £1,225,000 house in Ormonde Road, Moor Park, the day before his arrest.

At the Court of Appeal the judges were told that Valentine was planning a "back to back sale" of the house and would immediately sell it on to a second buyer, so it was unfair that his assets were found to be so high.

But Judge Loraine-Smith said the onus was on Valentine to prove his assets were not from his criminal lifestyle, and he had been unco-operative in providing any credible alternative estimate.

Dismissing arguments that the seven years in default made Valentine's overall sentence "manifestly excessive", the judge said that would only be the case if he failed to pay up money he had been found to be in possession of.

3:15pm Friday 10th November 2006

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