Robert Pfeffer, a 64-year old man, has sued two deputies allegedly exhibiting “roid rage” during an incident where one of the deputies tasered him. Deputy John Eaton, with the Lee County Sherriff’s Office, “escorted” Pfeffer to the ground and tasered him while Pfeffer was walking away from an ambulance. The EMS ambulance was requested by Pfeffer’s wife to attend to Mr. Pfeffer’s severe chest pains after receiving an implanted heart defibrillator (”Lee deputies face lawsuit after man Tasered during arrest,” December 22).
The plaintiff, Robert J. Pfeffer, a 64-year-old Bonita Springs man, was walking with his wife in their Spanish Wells neighborhood on April 11, 2007, when he suddenly felt sharp pain in his legs and chest. Pfeffer has a heart defibrillator, and his wife called paramedics out of concern he might be having a heart attack.
Pfeffer refused treatment after being seen by EMTs, and he began to walk home. The two deputies, John Eaton and Thomas Chappell, both of whom were assigned to the Bonita Springs Community Policing Unit, arrived at Spanish Wells and confronted the man. At some point, Eaton tackled Pfeffer — or, as the arrest report states, “escorted him to the ground” — and Chappell shot Pfeffer with his Taser stun gun.
The possible use of anabolic steroids and “roid rage” that could have caused the “improper, illegal and excessive use of force” were specifically cited by Robert Pfeffer in an amended complaint alleging multiple constitutional and civil rights violations by Deputy John Eaton, his partner Deputy Thomas Chappell and their boss Lee County Sheriff Michael Joseph Scott.
Wrestling is a sport that has brutal action, and often an even more brutal aftermath for fighters. Mixed martial arts, which is becoming a powerful alternative to wrestling, appears to be no different. Drugs, steroids and a bad mental state outside the ring may be just as prominent in mixed martial arts. That may have been the case for former competitor Justin Levens, who is suspected to have killed himself after killing his wife.
A few have approached the Levens murder-suicide tragedy without such steroid hysterics. Fightlinker thinks people need to stop focusing so much on steroids while ignoring painkillers which are a “bigger elephant in the room” (”Stop trying to disown Justin Levens,” December 19).
Levens was a mixed martial artist who was hooked on painkillers. Pain med addiction is a serious problem in our sport, and it’s only getting worse. What happened with Levens was obviously a rare and horrible outcome, and it’s not like we’re expecting James Irvin and Joe Riggs to go off like ticking time bombs any second now. But we might want to maybe consider looking into the painkiller issue. I don’t know what can be done, but at this point they’re a bigger elephant in the room than steroids are.
Sherdog makes note of several events that point to potential painkiller use/abuse by Justin Leven aka “The Executioner” (more…)
A list of bribes and gifts given to various board moderators [which included free product, Rolex watches and cash].
Details of payments to various bodybuilding forums for banner ads and other forms of online advertising.
Statements detailing purchases of stock made from well known suppliers and manufacturers.
Redicat was officially arrested on December 9, 2008 by U.S. Marshall Special Agent Jason Sherrell upon arriving at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on a flight from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport. His extradition was delayed by the Thailand airport closures at the end of November.
Ashley Livingston was transferred to a facility in Seattle, Washington where awaits trial facing multiple steroid distribution, steroid conspiracy and money laundering charges along with his co-conspirator Edwin Crawley in the United States District Court in the Western District of Washington as part of massive Operation Raw Deal investigation.
A drug sniffing dog was apparently responsible for a steroid bust at the Mexican border in El Paso on December 12, 2008. A United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer stopped a 2002 Chevrolet Trailblazer at the primary border inspection booth on the Paso del Norte Bridge in El Paso after the driver appeared unusually nervous. A drug sniffing dog named “Shadow” detected steroids carefully concealed inside the dashboard of the Trailblazer during a secondary inspection. Juan Carlos Castillo was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents and held without bond in the El Paso County Jail for attempting to smuggle 150 vials of anabolic steroids into the United States (”Steroids in dashboard and pot in fuel tanks busted by agents,” December 15).
The steroid seizure was made early Friday evening when a 2002 Chevrolet Trailblazer entered the downtown Paso Del Norte international crossing from Mexico. A CBP officer at the primary inspection booth noticed that the driver was nervous during a routine interview so the vehicle was selected for a secondary exam. During the secondary inspection, CBP drug sniffing dog “Shadow” alerted to the dashboard of the vehicle. CBP officers continued their exam and discovered bundles of anabolic steroids concealed in the dashboard. CBP officers removed a total of 150 vials of steroids from the dashboard compartment.
The steroid stash consisted of steroids manufactured in Mexico and sold under the brand names XT Labs and Astrovet Veterinarian Products. Astrovet and XT Labs are two of the many relatively new brands of anabolic steroids originating in Mexico that have replaced the void left by Operation Gear Grinder. Operation Gear Grinder temporarily disrupted the illicit United States steroid trade by shutting down eight Mexican companies that accounted for an estimated 82% of the black market steroid trade. The Operation targeted Quality Vet, Denkall and Animal Power, Laboratorios Tornel, Laboratorios Brovel, Pet’s Pharma, Syd Group and Loeffler.
A severe cocaine addiction helped a convicted steroid dealer obtain a more lenient sentence against the objections of Acting United States Attorney Nora Dannehy according to court documents. United States District Judge Mark R. Kravitz shortened the prison sentence of Edwin Porter (operator of Medline Pharmaceuticals sold via Anabolic-Superstore.com) since his “severe addiction to cocaine undoubtedly contributed to Defendant’s poor judgment” of conspiring to distribute anabolic steroids.
Edwin Porter completed a six month inpatient drug treatment program at Recovery House Inc. as a condition of his bond followed by another six months of weekly outpatient substance abuse counseling at Southwest Behavioral Clinic. Consequently, Judge Kravitz granted Porter a downward departure of six months from the Government’s sentencing recommendations of 30-37 months such that Porter was sentenced to 22 months imprisonment at facility that offers a Residential Drug and Alcohol Abuse Program.
Frédéric Vigeant was arrested and faces multiple charges related to the production, counterfeiting and possession of anabolic steroids and controlled substances for the purpose of trafficking, and a charge related to illegal firearms possession (”Pharmacie clandestine démantelée,” December 10).
Frédéric Vigeant was busted on July 25, 2008 when police responded to a domestic disturbance at the home of Frédéric Vigeant in an affluent neighborhood in Sainte-Thérèse, a suburb north of Montreal, during which they observed significant quantities of tablets and a couple of cannabis plants in plainview. Acting on this information, law enforcement obtained a search warrant and searched and seized substantial quantities of anabolic steroids and ancillary drugs labelled under the Syrus Labs brand as well as recreational drugs (marijuana and amphetamines) stored in the basement of the residence
According to documents filed with the Court and statements made in court, PORTER conspired with two other Arizona residents, Tyler Lunn and Matthew Peltz, to purchase more than one kilogram of raw steroid powder from China, manufacture anabolic steroids at PORTER’s home or Lunn’s apartment in Phoenix, and distribute them to customers around the country through a MySpace.com profile “anabolic-ss” and an Internet web site they created, www.anabolic-superstore.com. In August 2007, PORTER also instructed another individual to delete emails related to the distribution of anabolic steroids.
Kevin O’Connor, the former United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut originally in charge of the Medline Pharmaceuticals case, made headlines for his public proclamations that he would identify and contact individual customers purchasing steroids from Medline Pharmaceuticals, Superior Labs and other cases prosecuted under Operation Phony Pharm (”Customers Become Focus Of Steroid Probe,” September 27, 2007). (more…)
Academic researchers and policy experts advocated the acceptance of pharmacological performance-enhancement by mentally-competent, healthy individuals in a thought-provoking commentary in the journal Nature. The authors of the commentary restricted their argument to cognitive-enhancing drugs such as Adderall, Ritalin and Provigil, but every facet of their argument, point by point, holds relevance for a “presumption” that healthy individuals, not competing in drug-tested sports, should be able to engage in physical enhancement using anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. They call for policy on performance-enhancing drugs to be based on a rational, evidence-based approach.
The authors, which include Nature editor-in-chief Philip Campbell, point out that the acceptance of elective, enhancements for healthy individuals has been widely accepted in certain medical specialties (”Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy,” December 7).
Physicians who view medicine as devoted to healing will view such prescribing as inappropriate, whereas those who view medicine more broadly as helping patients live better or achieve their goals would be open to considering such a request. There is certainly a precedent for this broader view in certain branches of medicine, including plastic surgery, dermatology, sports medicine and fertility medicine.
The authors do attempt to distinguish pharmacological physical enhancement as a form of cheating, as contrasted with cognitive enhancement, but ONLY in the context of sport.
The Bangkok airports resumed full operations today after an eight-day closure which brought international commerce in Thailand to a standstill with unfortunate consequences for anabolic steroid users who purchase their gear from Thailand-based sources. The blockade of Bangkok’s airport will nonetheless result in delayed steroid shipments and increased the numbers of lost parcels over the next few weeks (”No packages from Thailand this Christmas,” November 29).
International items are now being redirected via neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. I presume these countries will have a field day scanning the Thai mail for contraband. There have been multiple reports of packages simply vanishing off the tracking systems altogether.
The People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) forced the closure of Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Asia’s fourth busiest airport, and Don Muang Airport, a major international hub for Asian air traffic, for the past week. The anti-government group occupied the airports demonstrating against Thailand’s People’s Power Party in a case of electoral fraud demanding that the ruling party’s Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat resign. The political upheaval has crippled the economy, not only the tourism industry, but the Thai export business including the thriving pharmaceutical steroid business. The seige ended and airports reopened after a Thai court removed Wongsawat from her post (”Protracted Thai Crisis Is Choking Its Economy,” December 1).
Many businesses rely heavily on Bangkok’s airports to move their goods and supplies, especially Suvarnabhumi, a $4 billion facility opened two years ago, normally moves about 100,000 passengers a day. Bangkok handles an estimated 3% of the world’s air cargo.
Some businesses are now sending goods for export roughly 1,000 kilometers overland through Thailand’s southern neighbor, Malaysia. But that involves a full day’s journey by road or rail through stretches of southern Thailand, where a bloody Islamic separatist insurgency has left 3,000 people dead since 2004.
Officials at Thailand’s Board of Investment said Friday that customs officials at the Malaysian border “cannot cope” with all the traffic, and were planning to keep checkpoints open around the clock to move more vehicles.
The impact of the airport sieges is spreading by the day. Thailand’s postal service says it has 23 metric tons, or 240,000 pieces of mail waiting to be delivered..
The U.S. Attorney of Western Kentucky says Brandon Millay, 41; Kevin Revelette, 37; Keith Evans, 37; and Jimmie Garrison, 41, were all indicted on Wednesday on charges of conspiring to distribute anabolic steroids. The indictment alleges that the four men tried to distribute the steroids between October 2006 and April 2008.
Brandon Millay was the subject of a steroid bust on or about April 1, 2008. Rumors of Millay’s bust ensued shortly thereafter with speculation about the interrelationship between busts of steroid sources that were in close contact with Millay, such as CPT and Kong. Millay was the first to report the steroid bust involving Scott Haines of UGL Diamond Labs in Nashville, Tennessee. Millay’s proximity to several steroid bust made several members suspicious. Not surprisingly, it was alleged by several people on the forums that bmillay became a cooperating informant for federal and/or state investigators. Millay strongly denied these allegations (”anyone see Bmillay’s post on outlaw??,” April 27).
i have not and will not ever hurt anyone
please let it die
rumors are bad and things do not work like some of you think
yes i have had my share of troubles , but they are mine not yours , and sometimes things aren’t as bad as they seem
Brandon Millay posted prolificly on various forums sharing information about his own steroid use, recommendations on steroid cycling, and methods for thwarting law enforcement efforts targeted at steroid users.
