A 16-YEAR-old boy who set up his own business selling cannabis sweets and vapes on the internet made more than £100,000 in just 18 months.

Oakley Campbell-Glover bought his products online, doubled the price, and then sold them at a 100 per cent profit under the brand name of North Devon Plugs through TikTok, Snapchat and Telegram.

He got his friend Taylor Sheahan to help him launder the estimated £120,000 turnover through a network of bank accounts and they used some of the cash to buy Bitcoin and other crypto currencies.

The entire operation was run from his home in Winkleigh and Sheahan’s in Coldridge, near Crediton and all the business was conducted online, with Campbell-Glover requiring customers to verify their ages and identities through Instagram videos.

They even organised promotional raffles to encourage business and were so successful that they had to move off Snapchat because it was deleting orders before they had a chance to fulfil them.

The pair were spared jail sentences because they were both aged 16 when they started the business and only just 18 when it was shut down by the police on Christmas Eve, 2020.

They spent the cash on designer clothes and expensive gadgets and police found no assets which could be seized other than the cash in the eight bank accounts which they were using.

Campbell-Glover, now aged 21, of Eggesford Road, Winkleigh, admitted being concerned in the supply of cannabis and ketamine and money laundering and Sheahan, also aged 21, of Coldridge, near Crediton, admitted money laundering when they appeared at Exeter Crown Court.

Campbell-Glover was curfewed for six months and ordered to do 240 hours of unpaid community work and Sheahan was curfewed for four months and ordered to do 120 hours unpaid work. Both were ordered to do 30 days of rehabilitation activities by Judge Stephen Climie.

He told them that if they had been adults and had been brought to court more promptly they would have been jailed for five and two and a half years apiece.

He said: “Frankly, the intellect and brainpower which you two employed in this criminal activity could have been used much better elsewhere. You demonstrated you are far from stupid, save for the fact that you got yourselves caught up in this.”

Mr Brian Fitzherbert, prosecuting, said Campbell-Glover set up an online store under the name of North Devon Plugs which sold cannabis products including foods, confectionary and vapes on Snapchat, Telegram, TikTok and Wikka.

He also sold some products containing ketamine by the same means and customers paid money for all the goods they bought into a series of bank accounts held by both men with Starling, Monzo, and Revolut banks and then transferring it to their accounts with Barclays and Natwest.

The police were alerted by one of the banks because of the sheer volume of money passing through the accounts, which financial investigators later estimated at between £110,000 and £120,000.

Miss Sally Daulton, for Campbell-Glover; and Miss Zoe Kuyken, for Sheahan, said they had been very young at the time but have used the three years since their arrests to get legitimate jobs and start normal careers.

Neither of them were drug users and the amounts of cash quoted by the prosecution were turnover rather than profit because Campbell-Glover was buying the products online and reselling them for roughly twice what he paid.