An 80-year-old lottery winner who once took home $3.3 million has been jailed for helping run what a judge called one of the largest fake-pill operations ever uncovered by UK police. A Bolton crown court jury found John Eric Spiby guilty of conspiring to produce and supply Class C drugs, along with firearms and ammo offenses and perverting the course of justice, per a Greater Manchester Police release. He was sentenced to 16 years and six months.
Prosecutors said Spiby led a drug network based at his "quiet, rural" home near Wigan that churned out counterfeit tablets of diazepam (aka Valium) on an industrial scale, with a potential street value of up to $398 million, reports the Guardian. The court heard that after his 2010 lottery win, Spiby modified the property and paid for machinery worth thousands of dollars to manufacture the bogus pills. In a group chat, Spiby had reportedly joked that "Elon [Musk] and Jeff [Bezos] best watch their backs."
Judge Nicholas Clarke told him, "Despite your lottery win, you continued to live a life of crime beyond what would normally have been your retirement years." Spiby was one of four men convicted over the scheme, which police described as an organized-crime group dealing in drugs and firearms. His son, 37-year-old John Colin Spiby, received nine years; Lee Drury, 45, was jailed for nine years and nine months; and 35-year-old Callum Dorian was sentenced in 2024 to 12 years.
Defense lawyer Adam Kent argued that Dorian was the true ringleader, quoting him as saying the "guy whose [house] we use is a millionaire," in reference to Spiby. The judge, however, said Spiby was "senior in both name and role" in the operation. The London Times notes that the men operated under cover of a phony company called Nutra Inc. as a front, with Drury reportedly at its helm.
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