Thread: Black market steroids pipeline leads from N.J. to China, feds say

By Ted Sherman/The Star-LedgerThe Star-Ledger/ on June 18, 2013 at 7:00 AM

NEW YORK

The brown paper package from China, sent by a company called Trendy Cosmetics, was addressed to a guy in Louisiana.
Inside was a box with an assortment of small colored bottles that looked like bath oil samples — except that some were labeled "methandrostenolone," an anabolic steroid popular with body builders.

"A needle in a haystack," remarked Wilfred Rivera, U.S. Customs and Border Protection branch chief at the International Mail Facility at John F. Kennedy International Airport. "We get 700,000 international parcels a day that we’re screening. Finding this is really like looking for a needle in a haystack."

When federal agents arrested an Edison personal trainer last month dealing steroids to buyers across the country, it opened a window on the pipeline to China — which has become a major supplier for black market performance enhancing drugs in this country.

Stoked by high demand, and fed by the relative anonymity of internet sales, the illicit sale of steroids is a booming business in the United States. And federal authorities acknowledge a lot of it gets through — most of it, they say, now being shipped from suppliers like "Trendy Cosmetics."

According to CBP statistics, China now accounts for more seizures of illicit steroids than anywhere else in the world. Last year, more than 400 pounds of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs shipped from China and Hong Kong were seized at U.S. entry ports — ten times as much as any other country.

In May, CBP agents stumbled upon Richard Gray, a personal trainer on staff at a gym in Edison, after a routine search of a parcel from China labeled "hardware products" was found to contain 110 ampules individually labeled as different types of anabolic steroids.

The package, being sent in care of a mail drop address to a business called Custom Parts, led to Gray. Inside his home, investigators said they discovered thousands of vials and containers of steroids and human growth hormone supplements in his basement, stacked on shelves like a pharmaceutical warehouse awaiting shipment.

Some were in injectable form, contained in syringe vials. Others were stored in large, gallon-sized plastic bags. Prosecutors said the drugs were being resold to customers across the country. They also said they found assorted shipping labels, packaging materials, shrink wrap and a large amount of Western Union receipts indicated wire transfers from various individuals throughout the country.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said China was turned into a virtual steroids supply house after a high-profile crackdown nearly a decade ago shut down a number of big labs in Mexico — then the major supplier of black market steroids to the United States.

The shift in supply lines became evident in 2007, officials say, when the DEA targeted 56 labs in this country that were manufacturing anabolic steroids and HGH supplements. Investigators found the labs were using raw powders that had originated in China.

More than 120 people were arrested as part of the international investigation, known as Operation Raw Deal, including Alfred Scarpa, a Sayreville, N.J., electrician who they said had produced "massive quantities" of the drugs in the basement lab. Scarpa, who later pleaded guilty, was sentenced to three years in prison.

Despite the big bust, however, China remains a steroids drug store for both "designer" compounds and knock-offs of brand name pharmaceutical products only available here by prescription, all accessible to anyone with an internet connection, officials said. "There are labs all over the place there," said DEA spokesman Rusty Payne of China. "They produce precursor powder, kits to make steroids at home, steroid products, and many chemical derivatives. It’s unregulated there, and thus legal."

While illegal in this country without a prescription, steroids are easy to find and buy, especially with a credit card over the internet.

"The market is huge. Absolutely huge," said Don Catlin, a prominent anti-doping scientist and former director of the U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory. "People have not stopped using steroids."
He said it goes beyond athletes.

"There are a lot of people that use them to buff up or look a little bigger without becoming Arnold Schwarzenegger," he said.
And a lot of the product he sees here comes from China.

"You go to any website and they will lead you back to China," Catlin said. "I’ve given up on the idea that you can control it. I don’t think you can."

Shipped in small boxes or heavy duty envelopes, the packages are sometimes intercepted at the International Mail Facility, just off one of the main runways at Kennedy Airport. But not everything gets checked and a lot likely gets through.

At a tour of the facility, Rivera said CBP officers screen packages they deem suspicious, putting anything tagged through X-ray machines.

Among an assortment of recently seized packages included the box from Trendy Cosmetics, as well as a corrugated box labeled "plastic products" mailed from Dongguan, China, filled with ampules of Adropen, a testosterone blend.

At Gray’s home, agents found similar bottles of popular anabolic steroids used by some to bulk up muscles or enhance athletic performance, including mastabol, boldenone undecylenate and nandrolone, all meticulously labeled and organized in boxes and individual trays in the basement of the house. He has been charged by the U.S. Attorney’s office with conspiracy to distribute drugs.

Court records show Gray was arrested in a similar case in 2007, after Food and Drug Administration agents at Kennedy Airport intercepted a series of parcels from China containing hundreds of vials of human growth hormone addressed to Gray. He received probation in that case.

Gray remains on bail in connection with the latest charges. If convicted this time, he faces up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Thanks for the post

400 lbs is probably a drop in the bucket. Imagine how much actually gets thru.