This is a story from maybe 10 years ago now, however it might have already been old by the time I found it. There was this guy, he was a chemist of some kind with access to all of the precursors a person might need to do fun things and the equipment to do it on.
He got the idea that he was going to synthesize Opioids for himself. He ended up doing this. I can't remember exactly what it was that he made, suffice to say it was a sufficiently potent Opioid and he had a seemingly endless supply of it due to his position. He ended up making it into a nasal spray and he woul just to sniffs all throughout the day. This went on for some time. The man could continually raise his tolerance to the point that he was more dependent upon Opioids than the medical establishment had ever really seen in practice.
Morton-Thiakol chemist Thomas K. Highsmith.
He got caught because he approached the janitor (the only black member of the staff) wondering if the guy could 'hook him up with a wholesaler'. Janitor not being a stereotype made it known to management.
Result - Arressed, bailed into methadone programme, suicide because etonitazine is a SUPER-agonist so no dose of methadone on earth would hald the AWS.
The 'Pharaoh fentanyl' story is absolute tosh. Guy claimed he paid a random custom synthesis company to produce 4-methyl beta-hydroxyfentanyl because the year before researchers had discovered 4-methyl fentanyl was more active than fentanyl. Sure, we know 4 substitution increases potency as it does in carfentanil, lofentanil and sufentanil, but ironically the simple methyl is harder to introduce, increases potency far less than an oxygen-containing moiety and considered a dead end. What the idiot ACTUALLY got hold of was
para methyl beta hydroxy fentanyl which is less potent than the parent drug. Idiot tried to introduce NMR data to 'prove what he had' and got laughed out of town.
LESSON - Don't presume others won't be able to interpret NMR instrumentation.
One of the good things the internet has brought us are free on-line tools that perform pretty damned accurate calculated GC-MS/NMR results so scammers no longer try the 'appeal to authority' fallacy because anyone who can draw a compound can, instantly, have a very accurate image of what instumnetal analysis SHOULD produce.
