‘This could put people’s lives at risk’: The ‘deeply worrying’ dangers of Olympian boxer Anthony Fowler’s Supreme Peptides selling unlicensed ‘DIY Ozempic’, a mystery London lab and how regulators are cracking down on ‘repeat offender’

Former Olympic boxer turned influencer Anthony Fowler has joined the booming market in cheap ‘DIY Ozempic’ in a way which scientists have told us could be putting lives at risk, a Daily Mail Sport investigation has found.

Fowler, who we exposed last year for making potentially dangerous claims about his cannabis oil products, has now expanded into peptides, by spinning a new business out of his Supreme CBD firm. The company was willing to sell weight-loss products to a would-be buyer while not disclosing the contents of the product and simply instructing them to inject themselves over several weeks to lose weight and ‘see what results you get’.

After approaching Fowler, 35, who won Commonwealth Games gold in 2014 and boxed for Team GB at Rio 2016, as part of our undercover investigation into his activities, Daily Mail Sport was offered a 40mg dose of a weight loss peptide for £120 by his new Supreme Peptides business and told it had reduced Fowler’s brother’s weight by two stones. We were told the product was ‘similar’ to the licensed weight-loss drug Mounjaro but had ‘no side effects’.

Under UK law, any companies using medical claims to sell products – including those pushing obesity treatments – must have the appropriate authorisation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) before selling or supplying it. Daily Mail Sport has found no evidence that Supreme Peptides has any products registered with the MHRA.

The MHRA told us it did not comment on potential or ongoing investigations. It told us: ‘If a product is classified as a medicine and is not appropriately authorised, we take regulatory compliance action.’

One of the products pictured on Fowler’s Supreme Peptides website – Tesamorelin, used in the US by HIV patients and people looking to shed abdominal fat – is not an MHRA-authorised medicine and selling or supplying it in the UK is illegal. Fowler is offering it for sale at a price of £89.99 for 10mg.

Fowler, who we exposed last year for making potentially dangerous claims about his cannabis oil products, has now expanded into peptides

Fowler, 35, won Commonwealth Games gold in 2014 and boxed for Team GB at Rio 2016

Channa Jayasena, a professor of medicine at Imperial College London, told us that it was ‘deeply worrying’ to see people, desperate to lose weight but unable to access prescription-only drugs, being offered unlicensed products.

Jayasena, a professor of reproductive endocrinology which deals with hormone and fertility issues, said: ‘This could put people’s lives at risk. You have to make peptides using very strong chemicals and then purify them using more strong chemicals. 

‘These chemicals are highly toxic and they are purified under incredibly rigorous conditions and standards, that need to be kept. My concern is that these are black market synthesised peptides, which have potential impurity and no guarantee of what is inside them.’

A major investigation by the Daily Mail into ‘DIY Ozempic’ sellers earlier this year found that peptides – the active ingredient in licensed weight-loss drugs – were being sold to people to make cheap home-use kits without the legally required medical checks or monitoring. Scientists told us that customers didn’t know what they were buying or whether the advised dosage was safe.

Potential harms include increased cancer risk and damage to organs. Huge demand for weight-loss injections – now believed to be used by around 2.5 million Britons – has fuelled a booming black market.

Liverpool-based Fowler, who continues to use retired professional footballers Paul Merson, Chris Kirkland, Matt Le Tissier, John Aldridge and Emile Heskey to promote his cannabis oil products, is openly claiming on his social media channels that his peptides should be taken for weight loss. In a post last month he claimed to have ‘a lab I use in London’ which tested them. Aldridge and Heskey have been promoting his weight-loss claims.

One of Fowler’s Instagram posts depicts a chiselled man bearing a six pack beside a fat man scoffing food, and declares of the health safety authorities: ‘They don’t want you having whats good for you (sic).’

Since setting up his peptides business, which he registered at Companies House in June, Fowler has fallen foul of Instagram rules and the platform suspended his account last month, depriving him of a key way of getting orders and issuing payment instructions to customers. He told his followers that Instagram had ‘grassed’ and ‘banned’ him and that he was ‘absolutely fuming’.

Former professional footballer Emile Heskey has been promoting Fowler’s Supreme CBD products 

One product pictured on Fowler’s Supreme Peptides website – Tesamorelin, used in the US by HIV patients and people looking to shed abdominal fat – is not an MHRA-authorised medicine

The ex-boxer set up an alternative account but Instagram has continued to prevent him from responding to customers’ direct messages. From his sun lounger on holiday, Fowler told his followers on August 27 that his DMs were working, only to state in a later post that he was being ‘harassed’ because they were blocked ‘yet again’.

Amid his Instagram difficulties, Fowler directed followers to the account of an ‘Anthony Lloyd’ whose WhatsApp profile picture is the Supreme Peptides brand, telling them this person would ‘look after you if you want to LOSE WE*IGHT or get in shape’.

Fowler avoids spelling ‘peptide’ and ‘weight’ properly in his posts – posting instead about ‘p*ptides’ and ‘we*ight.’ Concerns have been raised that users on Instagram have been deliberately disguising words with asterisks, symbols and altered spellings in an apparent attempt to avoid automated moderation, which will hide posts from a user’s feed.

When we approached Lloyd, posing as a buyer seeking a cheaper alternative to Mounjaro for his overweight wife, he immediately took our inquiry off-platform so that we could securely communicate via WhatsApp. In an exchange there, Lloyd told us that it would be £120 ‘for 40mg’ of the weight loss peptide. He detailed the paraphernalia he was including at that price, including the ‘pen’ – a syringe – with which to inject the drug and an ice pack to keep it at a low temperature. It was ‘lab tested’ and ‘already mixed ready to go,’ he said.

At no stage did Lloyd ask the buyer’s wife’s Body Mass Index (which tells doctors whether such a drug may be prescribed) or about any underlying health conditions and he was vague about the quantities, telling us to inject 2mg once a week for three or four weeks and ‘see what kind of results you get’.

When our customer asked if this product was ‘similar’ to the medically licensed weight loss drug Mounjaro, Lloyd replied: ‘It’s similar mate but this has no side effects.’ Lloyd claimed that Fowler’s brother has ‘already lost two stone’.

We messaged Fowler when he temporarily regained access to his Instagram messages, posing as another customer, ‘Emma’, asking for ‘weight loss if you have a product that works?’ He passed her straight on to Lloyd, who offered the same dosage as our first buyer at the same price and told us he was Fowler’s supplier.

The second customer asked if the product was similar to Ozempic. Lloyd replied: ‘It slows down (your) appetite’ and told her that the 40mg dosage should last her ‘two to three months’ if she took 2mg per week.

Fowler’s Supreme Peptides website, which makes multiple claims that the products are sold for research only

The former boxer appears prominently on the website’s homepage

‘Emma’ asked for an image of the bottle of the weight-loss drug she was buying, to establish what it contained, but could not get one out of Lloyd. It transpired that the product being sold for weight loss was not among the scores pictured on the Supreme Peptides website. Lloyd told her: ‘All other peptides are on the website but if you wanted that one you would have to contact me.’

She asked: ‘Mind if I ask why this one is different to the ones on the website?’ He seemingly avoided answering, telling her simply: ‘This one is a weight-loss peptide.’

When ‘Emma’ again asked Lloyd about the specific chemical ingredients in the weight loss peptide she was being offered, he simply told her it was for ‘research purposes’ and referred her to the Supreme Peptides website, where there is no information.

Supreme Peptides products require a bank transfer for the weight-loss drug, which would entail revealing our identity, so we have not followed through on the £120 purchases.

Fowler appears to be trying to exploit an MHRA loophole, under which certain substances may be supplied for legitimate ‘research’ without being licensed as medicines, by claiming that he is supplying them for ‘research purposes’.

Professor Jayasena, who has examined Fowler’s Supreme Peptides claims for us, said: ’I find the mention that this is “for research use only” deeply worrying and completely incongruous with what I’m seeing – which is a clear solicitation of members of the public.

‘The idea of members of the public who clearly don’t have any likely or plausible role in doing research, such as a university or a government or a private laboratory would have, asking for small quantities of peptides is completely far-fetched. It’s inconsistent with conducting research. Researchers do not do mail order delivery with needles or answer emails on how to inject stuff.’

Lynda Scammell, head of borderline products at the MHRA, told Daily Mail Sport: ‘We disregard claims that products are for “research purposes” if it is clear that such claims are being used as an attempt to avoid medicines regulations. If there is evidence within the promotional material that the products are in fact unauthorised medicines intended for human use, we will take appropriate regulatory action.’

Since setting up his peptides business, which he registered at Companies House in June, Fowler has fallen foul of Instagram rules and the platform suspended his account last month

He told his followers that Instagram had ‘grassed’ and ‘banned’ him and that he was ‘absolutely fuming’

Many peptides are sold with no medical claim, such as those sold for bodybuilding, so do not fall within MHRA scrutiny. But the huge growth in their use as a cut-price Ozempic alternative has seen the regulator raid a number of premises involved in manufacturing and distributing unlicensed weight-loss medicine this year.

Fowler also repeatedly tells his followers that his products are British-made and superior to substandard Chinese imitations.

Professor Jayasena added: ‘Any drug or high-quality chemical that’s made for human consumption, particularly medicine, needs to be subjected to standards – incredibly rigorous standards – which control even the temperature logs of the fridges and the freezers in which the drug is kept.

‘You have to show the stability of your compound. You have to show bugs growing in it. You have to show purity. It is a real hole in the head – and that’s why only big pharmaceutical companies do this type of stuff – and it doesn’t matter where it’s made.’

After our series of exchanges with Anthony Lloyd over a period of ten days, his Instagram account disappeared on August 28. It is unclear whether he removed it, or it was forcibly closed.

From his sunshine holiday location, Fowler has now been directing customers who want to buy peptides from him to the Instagram account of his brother, Peter Fowler. Last week, he set up a new TikTok account to promote his peptides.

Daily Mail Sport can reveal that Fowler’s Supreme CBD firm has been put on an Advertising Standards Authority ‘non-compliant’ list of repeat offenders after the body’s continued censure of him for claiming his cannabis oil supplements can have medical benefits failed to deter him.

That listing is supposed to trigger an investigation by Liverpool Council Trading Standards. But throughout all of our reporting on Fowler, Liverpool City Council has been singularly unwilling to provide us with any sense of whether Supreme CBD has been or might be subjected to its scrutiny.

Former Liverpool and England goalkeeper Chris Kirkland has also promoted Fowler’s products

Fowler also repeatedly tells his followers that his products are British-made and superior to substandard Chinese imitations. But he did not respond to any of our questions

The council said: ‘We don’t comment on investigations. Any issues that are raised are investigated as and when they arise.’

Daily Mail Sport approached Fowler and asked him if he knew that MHRA approval was needed to legally sell peptides being marketed as an obesity treatment.

We asked him the nature of the ‘research’ his customers were being told the peptides being sold to them was for. We asked him why he didn’t picture the £120 weight-loss peptides on his website, like all his other peptide products?

We asked him for the name and location of his London ‘testing lab’ and the name of his supplier. He has not responded to our questions.