A Guy Selling Detergent As Cocaine Has Been Found Guilty of Fraud

There's cutting coke with lactose powder or mannitol, and then there's completely forgetting about the cocaine altogether and just giving your customers pure detergent. Which is what a conman in Middlesbrough, England, was doing for two months before he got caught.

Jamie Lee Taylor, 27, passed off the cleaning product as the Class A drug, which, according to Teesside Crown Court, earned him a "fair bit of money." But he found himself in the dock because, despite having never actually being caught selling illegal drugs, he was passing stuff off as real. He pleaded guilty to offering to supply cocaine to others between July and September and "possession of an article for use in fraud"—a.k.a. three bags of white powder—on September 5.

Alex Bousfield, the defending lawyer, said: "It's an unusual case. He has not been supplying drugs to anyone. Surely the real peril in the offense of drugs is it contributes in continuing that misuse of drugs and everything else that follows from it. He knows throughout—he's the only one who knows—these are not drugs."

Prosecutor Rachel Masters said, "Essentially, the defendant is purporting to sell drugs in the way that a drug dealer would sell drugs. He's making a fair bit of money out of it as a result."

The judge is still unsure on how to proceed and has adjourned the case, meaning Taylor will be sentenced next Monday.

Obviously, it should be considered that the detergent itself could have done damage to the people taking it. A few years ago, it was reported that some crystal meth users had turned to snorting detergent as a substitute and then become violently ill. Once in the body, it can cause vomiting and burning of the internal organs.

Read: Yahoo Reportedly Spied on Millions of Users' Emails for the Government