'My husband stole £600k for sex and antiques' - drug side effects tearing families apart

Frances had only just arrived at work when she received a phone call that turned her life upside down.

Police officers had arrested her solicitor husband Andrew over allegations he was defrauding clients - and were searching the family home the couple shared with their two children.

Andrew's office, in a leafy village to the south of Manchester, also resembled a scene from a TV drama - cloaked in yellow crime tape, staff in shock and records being boxed up.

His legal practice held power of attorney for many elderly people with dementia. But the police discovered that hundreds of thousands of pounds of Andrew's clients' money were missing. Officers later found he had spent the funds on adult webcam sites, sex workers and antiques.

A resulting court case would hear Andrew's impulsive behaviour was caused by medication he was being prescribed for Parkinson's disease.

He stole from 13 of his clients. All, except two, were aged over 80, and some were unwell. They had a combined £600,000 taken from their accounts.

One 87-year-old living in a care home died shortly after the theft - her estate didn't have enough money to pay for her funeral.

"People didn't want to know us, and I can understand that entirely," says Frances, thinking back to what Andrew did. While their daughter, Alice, says her father "never forgave himself".

Andrew's behaviour would later have tragic consequences.

His case is extreme - but far from isolated.

Over the past year, we have spoken to scores of families whose lives have been torn apart by impulsive behaviours caused by a family of medications known as dopamine agonist drugs.

These include the development of new sexual urges - such as addictions to pornography and sex workers - but also compulsive shopping and gambling that have cost people tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The drugs are an established treatment for Parkinson's, Restless Legs Syndrome and other conditions. They have been prescribed 1.5 million times by GPs alone in England past year.

NHS advice is clear - if you are taking them and you have any concerns, you should speak to your doctor.

One in six Parkinson's patients on the drugs are affected by impulse control disorders - the clinical term for this behaviour - according to one 2010 study of just over 3,000 people.

In response to our investigation, the chair of the MPs' Health Select Committee has described our findings as "devastating" and has written to the UK drugs regulator asking it to review official warnings.

Many of the people we spoke to told us they had no history of any such impulsive behaviours before taking the drugs - and made no connection with their medication when they began experiencing them.

They say doctors failed either to properly warn them or to monitor the drugs' effects.

Back in the summer of 2013, on the weekend after his arrest, Andrew had attempted to put on a brave face for his family, they say. But that Sunday he collapsed at home and was taken to A&E.

He had been diagnosed with Parkinson's a few years before and, when he began to experience shakes, doctors had prescribed a drug called Pramipexole. The medicine's effects were "miraculous", according to Frances.

Pramipexole and similar drugs work by boosting the activity of dopamine - a chemical that helps regulate our movements, but which also drives feelings of reward and enjoyment.

Andrew's Parkinson's tremor dramatically reduced, say his family, and soon he was even back playing tennis.

But in A&E after his collapse, a doctor asked Frances if she was aware that Pramipexole could cause a range of impulsive behaviours in people who take it.

Frances says this was a "terrible shock". She couldn't understand why she had never been warned despite attending all of Andrew's appointments.

The potential side effects of the medication, she says, finally explained Andrew's compulsive shopping - although at that point she had no idea about the true extent of his spending.

Before his diagnosis, Andrew had used webcams and sex-chat sites roughly once a week. But in the year after he started on the pills, he made nearly 500 payments to them.

He went on to spend more than £100,000 on one website alone using his clients' money. He also spent nearly £80,000 on sex workers in just four months, and when he was arrested his mobile phone was found to contain the numbers of 90 different escorts.

Andrew - who had always been a big history buff - also began compulsively buying antique pens, pottery and cricket memorabilia. He spent £85,000 on eBay in the six months leading up to the police raid.

"Dad was so ashamed from the point he was arrested, he basically didn't leave the house," says Alice.

For more than a year, the family waited to hear from prosecutors - in the end, Andrew was charged with fraud.

Frances says the couple's son, Harry, "loved his dad very much" - but that Harry, who had longstanding mental health problems, found what happened after his father's arrest "very difficult to cope with".

Harry's mental health became so bad that he was sectioned. He returned home, then disappeared. Weeks later his body was discovered - he had taken his own life.

In court in 2015, Andrew pleaded guilty. During sentencing the judge said he had squandered his clients' money on various "sexual excesses" and "absurd extravagances".

Mr Justice Openshaw said he believed Andrew's behaviour had been caused by the drugs he was taking - but argued he had been a practising solicitor who was still able to competently conduct his business in other ways.

As a man with family, friends and advisers - said the judge - Andrew should have sought help from them and identified the effect the medication was having on him.

Andrew was sentenced to four years inside HM Prison Manchester, commonly known as Strangeways.

During the investigation, all Andrew's assets were frozen to recoup some of the money stolen from his clients.

The family were also unable to proceed with a clinical negligence case against Andrew's doctors because legal rules can bar the recovery of damages closely connected to a serious criminal act.

Frances and Andrew got divorced while he was in prison. Upon his release, two years after being jailed, he moved into sheltered accommodation.

Prison had taken its toll on Andrew, say his family, and the Covid lockdowns were particularly hard on him. He had stopped taking the dopamine agonist medication immediately after discovering its effect on him and his Parkinson's symptoms had advanced.

"I think his whole life got completely dismantled," says Alice. "Yes, because of the Parkinson's, but really because of the drugs."

In October 2020, Andrew killed himself.

His death is not listed in the UK's Yellow Card public record - the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) scheme that collates reported adverse effects of drugs. Neither will it include that of his son, Harry.

The collateral harm caused by dopamine agonist drugs to wider families will also not be recorded. Some told us they had lost their life savings or even their homes to users' compulsive gambling, shopping or other behaviours.

Many also said they had been left with no recourse to justice for their losses because of the challenges of mounting class actions in the UK, and the difficulties in fulfilling the requirements of a clinical negligence case, where they would have to prove they had not been warned.

It has been more than 20 years since these dopamine agonist drugs were first found to cause impulsive behaviour.

Last year, the BBC revealed how GSK - the British drugs firm that first licensed this type of drug for Parkinson's in the UK - had discovered, as far back as 2003, a link between its medication and what it called "deviant" sexual behaviour.

Warnings appeared three years later but only listed the potential for an "increased libido", "harmful behaviour" and an "altered sexual interest". These patient information leaflets still do not state how common impulse control disorders can be.

Now Layla Moran, who chairs the MPs' Health Select Committee, is calling for warnings to list how common impulse control disorders are as a whole and state the specific types of behaviours - such as porn addiction - sometimes developed.

"It's not just a side effect that affects an individual, it's affecting families and communities and creating new victims," she told us.

"What does 'impulsive behaviour' mean and how likely is it that they [patients] can get it? At the moment, patients don't have that information, and without it, how can they be expected to mitigate it?"

Ms Moran says the MHRA's Yellow Card scheme is "not fit for purpose" for reporting side effects people find shameful.

The government has also described our findings are "hugely concerning".

However, the MHRA told us there are no plans to change warnings. These sexual behaviours are "individualised", says the agency, and so it is not possible to include an "exhaustive list" in information leaflets.

It previously told the BBC it does not list the frequency of impulse control disorders because many people do not report them.

GSK said its drug had been extensively trialled, repeatedly approved by regulators around the world and prescribed for more than 17 million treatments. It said it had shared its report about safety concerns with regulators.

Solicitor Andrew's prescribed drug, Pramipexole, is made by Boehringer Ingelheim. The company did not comment.

In 2017, doctors were required to give Parkinson's patients, and their families verbal and written information about the risk of impulsive behaviours, and to regularly monitor their development - under guidelines from NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

But the BBC has heard from many Parkinson's patients prescribed the drugs since those guidelines were introduced, who say they were not properly warned about the risks. Some patients say they are currently suffering from impulsive behaviours.

Alice and Frances have moved hundreds of miles away from the village they lived in, but their pain remains with them.

"I had my life taken away from me: my home, the community I lived in, but above all my son," says Frances.

"I just don't have the words to say how devastating that is."

If you have been affected by the issues raised in this story you can visit the BBC Action Line for support.