A FORMER chemist from Harrow Weald has been jailed for a plot to distribute a huge consignment of the stimulant drug 'meow meow' to London and the West Country.
Allen Valentine, 51, of Kynaston Wood, was imprisoned for three years and fours months after admitting conspiracy to supply the class B drug methylmethcathinone between 7 October and 24 November 2011.
The Metropolitan Police confiscated two batches of the substance totalling more than 100kg and with a street value of between £2.5million and £3million.
Detective Inspector Colin Stephenson, of the Met's Central Task Force (East), who led the operation, said: "This particular drug is well-known across the UK club scene and can be very dangerous.
"All drugs, if misused, can cause fatalities and the seizure of this significant haul will no doubt save many young lives.
"Our operation has not only seen the drugs removed from the streets but has also greatly disrupted criminal network intent on supplying drugs to young people."
It transpired that Valentine - a former sales rep for Viagra maker Pfizer - had been in jailed for five-and-a-half years in 2004 for running a counterfeit factory manufacturing the sex aid pills in Wembley.
The latest plot, however, involved a different drug, and Valentine and accomplice Kenneth Warwick arranged the handover of around 50 1/2 kilos of 'meow meow' to Bristol crime network drugs courier Michael Harry on October 7 last year.
Accomplice Nicholas Bailey was in constant communication with Harry for the first handover as he guided him into London to the location of the transaction.
But police surveillance officers were watching and swooped to arrest Harry. They found him in a Vauxhall Vectra in Sudbury Court Drive, Wembley, at 2.30pm with a car full of drugs.
The gang set up another deal to recoup their losses and the cops were once again keeping a look out when on November 24 last year they followed Enver Ibrahim, who worked for a London organised crime syndicate, to Bristol where he was seen swapping cash for just shy of 50kilos of the drug and was arrested redhanded.
Valentine and Warwick were subsequently arrested on March 2 2012 and Bailey on May 12 2012.
Warwick, 37, unemployed, of Farringdon, east London, was sentenced alongside Valentine at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Friday to four months' jail after admitting for conspiracy to supply the class B drug between October 7 and November 24 2011.
The third defendant in the dock, Bailey, a 27-year-old unemployed ex-soldier from Romford in Essex, got three years and four months' imprisonment once he admitted conspiracy to supply the class B drug on October 7 2011.
Ibrahim, 43, unemployed, of Archway, north London, was jailed for 42 months at Bristol Crown Court on April 12 for possession with intent to supply while Harry, 26, a music teacher of Bristol, Somerset, was jailed for 40 months at Blackfriars Crown Court on December 13 2011 for possession with intent to supply. Both had pleaded guilty.
