PAiN
10-30-2014, 10:07 PM
Anderson bodybuilder sentenced in steroid trafficking case
5:36 PM, Oct 30, 2014
An Anderson County bodybuilder is headed to federal prison for selling steroids from China to customers across the nation via his website, court records show.
Michael de Souza Neto has struck a deal with the U.S. attorney's office to plead guilty to charges of conspiracy to distributed anabolic steroids and being a felon in possession of a cache of guns. The plea agreement calls for a sentence of 78 months, or just over six years.
It's rare to find a steroid conspiracy case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, but court records show Neto was no gym rat steroids hustler. He made tens of thousands of dollars from customers that spanned the country.
He had a website and a stash house. Federal authorities seized more than $60,000 in December 2013 as well as "several kilograms of what appeared to be powdered anabolic steroids in separate plastic bags," more than 200 vials of an anabolic steroid liquid, ledgers detailing his Internet sales, recipes for using cutting agents to boost the quantity of steroid powder he offered for sale, detailed shipping instructions for each customer and an arsenal of guns, including an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle, according to the plea agreement.
The identities of his customers were not listed in court records.
Neto, who lived in Andersonville and kept a stash house in Tazewell, Tenn., operated Southern Fitness, a gym in Clinton he billed as state-of-the-art.
In June 2012, he began buying bulk quantities of anabolic steroids from China and set up a website from which to peddle them, Assistant U.S.
Attorney Caryn Hebets wrote in the plea agreement. Authorities raided his home and stash house in early December 2013, although court records do not detail what spurred the search.
Once arrested, Neto called his grandmother using a Blount County Jail phone in which inmates are notified their conversations will be recorded. He spoke "in coded language, referenced additional items located in a separate location, including ‘sixty-five' thousand dollars," the agreement stated. Agents confronted the grandmother three days later, and she turned over $60,600 in cash "which had been removed from a storage unit the day before."
Defense attorney T. Scott Jones said de Souza Neto agreed to skip a grand jury review of the case and plead guilty, in part, to protect his grandmother from prosecution as an accessory.
"We're pleased to reach an agreed upon resolution … that insulates his family from prosecution," Jones said Thursday.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/watchful-eye/anderson-bodybuilder-sentenced-in-steroid-trafficking-case_85068032
5:36 PM, Oct 30, 2014
An Anderson County bodybuilder is headed to federal prison for selling steroids from China to customers across the nation via his website, court records show.
Michael de Souza Neto has struck a deal with the U.S. attorney's office to plead guilty to charges of conspiracy to distributed anabolic steroids and being a felon in possession of a cache of guns. The plea agreement calls for a sentence of 78 months, or just over six years.
It's rare to find a steroid conspiracy case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, but court records show Neto was no gym rat steroids hustler. He made tens of thousands of dollars from customers that spanned the country.
He had a website and a stash house. Federal authorities seized more than $60,000 in December 2013 as well as "several kilograms of what appeared to be powdered anabolic steroids in separate plastic bags," more than 200 vials of an anabolic steroid liquid, ledgers detailing his Internet sales, recipes for using cutting agents to boost the quantity of steroid powder he offered for sale, detailed shipping instructions for each customer and an arsenal of guns, including an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle, according to the plea agreement.
The identities of his customers were not listed in court records.
Neto, who lived in Andersonville and kept a stash house in Tazewell, Tenn., operated Southern Fitness, a gym in Clinton he billed as state-of-the-art.
In June 2012, he began buying bulk quantities of anabolic steroids from China and set up a website from which to peddle them, Assistant U.S.
Attorney Caryn Hebets wrote in the plea agreement. Authorities raided his home and stash house in early December 2013, although court records do not detail what spurred the search.
Once arrested, Neto called his grandmother using a Blount County Jail phone in which inmates are notified their conversations will be recorded. He spoke "in coded language, referenced additional items located in a separate location, including ‘sixty-five' thousand dollars," the agreement stated. Agents confronted the grandmother three days later, and she turned over $60,600 in cash "which had been removed from a storage unit the day before."
Defense attorney T. Scott Jones said de Souza Neto agreed to skip a grand jury review of the case and plead guilty, in part, to protect his grandmother from prosecution as an accessory.
"We're pleased to reach an agreed upon resolution … that insulates his family from prosecution," Jones said Thursday.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/watchful-eye/anderson-bodybuilder-sentenced-in-steroid-trafficking-case_85068032