Man jailed for 16 months for selling illegal tooth-whitening gel

[Anonymous]

 

Conman jailed for 16 months for selling illegal tooth-whitening gel online made with 100 TIMES safe level of cleaning chemicals

• Barrington Armstrong-Thorpe bought the gel from America and had been selling it online since 2004
• A judge at Chelmsford Crown Court told Armstrong-Thorpe that he had lied throughout the week long trial

Barrington Armstrong-Thorpe was jailed for selling banned tooth whitening gel

A conman who sold potentially dangerous tooth-whitening gel which contained up to 100 times the legal level of cleaning chemical hydrogen peroxide has been jailed for 16 months.

Barrington Armstrong-Thorpe, 68, was found guilty of eight consumer protection offences after a judge told him he had ‘lied’ his way through a week-long trial.

Armstrong-Thorpe, from Clacton, Essex, who is known to have used 17 aliases, had bought the gel for his online company Brighter Smile Marketing from America and claimed on its websites that the product complied with EU laws.

The websites, brightersmile.co.uk and smilebrighternow.com, also failed to include information identifying the trader or the customer’s consumer rights.

Essex Trading Standards officers tested the whitening syringes and analysis showed that they were 69, 89 and 100 times over the EU permitted limit of 0.1 per cent hydrogen peroxide.

Armstrong-Thorpe had denied the charges but was found guilty on all counts at Chelmsford Crown Court.

Sentencing the trader, Judge Karen Walden Smith said: ‘I have never heard someone lie as you did with barely a pause for breath.

‘The business was organised for the purpose of making money and to do so you lied and lied without concern for the public.

‘Your concern throughout has been your profit.’

The court heard that Armstrong-Thorpe, who appeared in court on crutches because of a bad back, had received 190,000 US dollars in a PayPal account between 2007 and 2010, the only figure that prosecutors could establish.

He began selling the kits, which costs ‘tens of pounds’, in 2004 and thousands of customers purchased them.

But despite those sales, Barry Gilbert, mitigating, said that not much money had been made from the product and that Armstrong-Thorpe had been declared bankrupt.

He added that the product had worked as customers had continuously reordered and said that no complaints had ever been made.

A spokesman for Essex Trading Standards however, said peroxide was absorbed through the teeth into the body and it was not known what long term damage could be caused by excessive levels.

Armstrong-Thorpe, who described himself as a chiropractor and had arranged for his dog to be put down as he knew a prison term was likely, had previously served four years in a Los Angeles jail for perjury in 1993 and has a list of offences going back to 1967, the court heard.

Teeth whitening products sold by Barrington Armstrong-Thorpe were found to contain up to 100 times the legal amount of hydrogen peroxide

Armstrong-Thorpe had been selling the products, pictured here, online since 2004

Armstrong-Thorpe had bought the teeth whitening kits from America and despite thousands of customers buying them, was declared bankrupt according to defence lawyers

Since his conviction an announcement had been posted on the Smilebrighter website stating: ‘Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond our control we have had to suspend orders for a short while.

‘We will be back shortly as soon as we can sort the problem out.’

Essex Councillor Kevin Bentley, who is responsible for Trading Standards in the county, warned after the verdict: ‘Using unfamiliar websites to purchase unfamiliar goods for a cheap price may put you at risk.

‘Teeth whitening gel such as this could cause permanent damage and be extremely expensive to put right.’

‘This conviction should act as a warning to other traders who may be trying to make money by selling these illegal goods.

‘You will be caught and potentially get a prison sentence.’

 

He was found guilty of eight separate offences relating to two different websites, one is pictured

The websites showed before and after pictures of people who it claimed had used the tooth whitening kits

 

One of Barrington-Armstrong’s websites now shows a page informing customers that sales have been suspended – the message has shown since the conman was jailed

 

        

[Author]

Posts