Two men from Breda have been arrested for illegal trafficking in medicines and other prohibited substances. The men sold the fake medicines without a prescription via a webshop: Slaapspelen.net. The webshop is associated with one death after delivery of the fake medicines.
The Public Prosecution Service previously took action against webshop Funcaps.nl, but has now also focused on Slaapspelen.net. It is suspected that a woman from Voorburg died after the delivery of a fake version of the heavy painkiller oxycodone. The pills contain the life-threatening synthetic substance nitasenes.
Police and justice are still investigating whether there is a link with other deaths, including that of a woman in a village not far from Rotterdam. The two men from Breda (28 and 33 years old) who are suspected of having been involved in the webshop Slaap Pills.net are in custody and must appear in court for the first time on December 15, says the NOS.
The 33-year-old man is also charged with preparatory acts for the import and export of cocaine.
Nitazene in blood
Since last year, the Dutch Forensic Institute (NFI) has investigated a total of six deaths and four serious poisonings that can be linked to a nitazene, most of them via counterfeit oxycodone.
The forensic institute does not rule out that more deaths are related to nitasenes. “As NFI, we have no insight into toxicological research carried out in other places, so the actual figures could be higher,” says NFI toxicologist Kristof Maudens.
Pills purchased at Slaapspelen.net
The reason for the investigation into Slaapspelen.net was the discovery last April of the body of a 44-year-old woman in Voorburg. In her apartment, the police found, among other things, packaging of a drug that she had purchased as oxycodone from Slaap Pills.net.
The pills, but also in the woman’s blood, turned out to contain nitazenes, which indicates that it was probably a counterfeit drug from a drug laboratory. The Public Prosecution Service calls nitasenes a “synthetic opioid that is often tens to thousands of times stronger than morphine”. As a result, an incorrect dosage quickly leads to an overdose. Sometimes less than a milligram can cause life-threatening situations.
Can it be proven?
The two from Breda have not yet been prosecuted for involvement in the death of the woman from Voorburg. According to those involved in the case, in these types of cases it is very difficult to prove that there is a direct link between the death and substances that the person in question had purchased. For example, other substances were also found in the woman’s blood, including heavy sleeping pills that she had also purchased from Slaap Pills.net.
The same goes for the Funcaps webshop. In that case, the suspects are linked to the deaths of possibly 49 people, but for the time being they too are only being prosecuted for violating the Medicines Act. Previously, director Ruud Coolen van Brakel of the Institute for Responsible Medicine Use (IVM) estimated that there are hundreds of these types of sites.