Was IFBB Pro Bodybuilder Flex Lewis connected to the Tennessee steroid investigation involving several Tennesse law enforcement officers? Absolutely not! However, Nashville, Tennessee’s News Channel 5 took the opportunity to include the following teaser on their website as part of their exclusive coverage of the steroid investigation (”Nashville’s Hidden Steroid Culture,” May 7).
On Thursday night, the second part of the NewsChannel exclusive steroids investigation will focus on the informant and the Nashville Predators team physician and world-class body builder Flex Lewis. The report airs at 6 p.m.
By stating that their steroid investigation will “focus” on Flex Lewis, the reader is left to speculate how Flex Lewis is connected to the steroid investigation. Is he involved? Or is is just going to talk about steroids? It turns out the answer is negative to both questions.
I contacted Flex since I know he lives in the United Kingdom and asked him about this. He explained that he happened to be at a nutritional store in Tennessee doing a demo as a representative of Gaspari Nutrition. A local television camera crew briefly interviewed him but they NEVER mentioned steroids!
The media is unbelievable. This is probably why Jim Lorimer told pro bodybuilders not to trust the media when it comes to steroids in a private athlete’s meeting at this year’s Arnold Classic.
UPDATE: The sports supplement store where Flex Lewis made a guest appearance promoting Gaspari was American Nutrition Wholesalers in Hermitage, Tennessee. Owner Mark Johnson is considered a main suspect by investigators in the Tennessee steroid investigation. Lewis just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and has absolutely no relationship with Johnson or this investigation. So, I hope NewsChannel 5 in Nashville uses the Flex Lewis footage for the good of the health industry as promised.
Three of the seven co-defendants indicted for their role in David Jacobs’ Texas-based steroid distribution network were sentenced today including David Jacobs. All seven co-conspirators have already pleaded guilty. David Jacobs, Amber Jarrell and Matt Williams all received probation along with a monetary fine based on their respective role in the steroid operation (”Plano steroids supplier wants to help clean up NFL,” May 2)
Sentenced Thursday:Mr. Jacobs, 35, ringleader, three years’ probation and a $25,000 fine. Amber Jarrell, 37, of Plano, his former girlfriend, three years’ probation and a $1,000 fine. Matt Williams, 39, of Dallas, who helped bottle and store the steroids, three years’ probation and a $10,000 fine.
Awaiting sentences:Andrew Schenck of Dallas; Juan Carlos Ballivian of Houston; Brandon Mark Smith of the Dallas area; and Jamie Mongeau of Wichita, Kan.
The ringleader of one of the largest steroids trafficking networks in the nation said Thursday after he was sentenced to probation that he plans to meet with the NFL to share his expertise to help “clean up” football.
“I want to help them understand the loopholes, how I was able to help people beat the tests, and how prevalent steroid use is,” Plano bodybuilder David Jacobs said after his sentencing hearing.
Jacobs, a former body builder, said he advised about 10 N.F.L. players on how to exploit loopholes in the league’s drug-testing program. One way, he said, was to have team doctors write them prescriptions for drugs that would mask steroid use…
Jacobs said he advised players, including Lehr, to ask their team doctors to write them prescriptions for finasteride, a drug used to treat balding in young men. Jacobs said a Falcons team doctor wrote Lehr a prescription for the substance.
Now that the leader of one of the largest steroid distribution rings in the country was sentenced to probation along with two other co-conspirators, it seems to confirm that steroid dealers were not the targets of the federal steroid investigation in Texas. It appears that the real targets of the investigation are professional athletes, namely NFL football players with David Jacobs providing the steroids and football link.
Mr. Jacobs, 35, said, “I sold steroids and a significant amount of growth hormone to Matt Lehr.” He said Mr. Lehr’s purchases totaled tens of thousands of dollars from spring 2006 to spring 2007, significantly larger quantities than could be for personal use.
At one point, Mr. Jacobs said, Mr. Lehr agreed to have boxes of raw steroid powder from China shipped to Mr. Lehr’s house in Georgia. Mr. Jacobs said he asked his former friend to do this because too many packages headed to his Plano house were being seized by U.S. Customs.
David Jacobs has previously denied providing federal prosecutors with the names of customers who bought steroids from him stressing that evidence and associations with Lehr were established independent of his cooperation. He has repeatedly been advised by his attorney to avoid publicly naming names. Why did Jacobs name Matt Lehr this weekend?
Mr. Jacobs said he was speaking out now because he was angry about Mr. Coggins’ statements last week to The News.
“We have been told by the prosecutors that they do not intend to bring charges against Matt Lehr in connection with their ongoing steroid investigation,” Mr. Coggins said Wednesday.
“It’s an issue of right and wrong,” Mr. Jacobs said. “I’m taking responsibility for my actions. And I’m not blaming people for my mistakes. I’m not going to lay down while other people attack my character and my integrity and accuse me of extortion and lies and making up information. It’s time for Matt to be a man.”
Paul Coggins, Matt Lehr’s attorney, claims that David Jacobs is providing false information in exchange for prosecutorial leniency in sentencing; Coggins also told the New York Times that Jacobs tried to extort money from Matt Lehr.
“He threatened Matt and said you have to pay my attorney’s fees or I am going to end your career,” Coggins said in a telephone interview on Saturday. He said Lehr met Jacobs when they were bodybuilders.
“Jacobs saw Matt as a guy with a lot of money and Matt declined to pay his fees,” Coggins added.
Coggins, the former United States attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said he had represented Lehr for three months. “We are confident that the more the feds look at Jacobs, the less credible of a source of information he becomes,” Coggins said.
It will be interesting to see how Matt Lehr’s attorney responds to David Jacobs’ latest allegations along with evidence of significant financial links between Lehr and Jacobs.
A federal steroid investigation in Texas that shut down a major steroid source in the Texas is now targeting an NFL football player. Matt Lehr, currently with the New Orleans Saints but previously with the Dallas Cowboys and Atlanta Falcons, was one of the subjects of a grand jury investigation convening in Texas according to the New York Times. At least one active NFL player from the Atlanta Falcons was subpoenaed to testify against Lehr on possible steroid distribution charges (”Former Dallas Cowboy named in steroid investigation,” April 8 ).
Amateur bodybuilder David Jacobs was the steroid source that was busted in May 2007. Jacobs had extensive ties to both amateur and professional bodybuilders; he was widely recognized in the sport as IFBB Pro Branch Warren’s training partner. Fortunately for the sport of bodybuilding, bodybuilders were NOT the target of the federal investigation. It now appears that the end target(s) of the U.S. attorney’s office are professional football player(s).
David Jacobs had also previously trained with NFL player Matt Lehr in Texas. Lehr’s former girlfriend, female bodybuilder Andrea Trent, confirmed that David Jacobs and Matt Lehr were close.
“David and Matt were close and pretty tight,” said Ms. Trent, adding that they worked out together “all the time.”
Branch Warren has distanced himself from David Jacobs but surprisingly has come to the defense of football player Matt Lehr in the Dallas Morning News.
Local pro bodybuilder Branch Warren, who used to train with Mr. Jacobs, said he is friends with Mr. Lehr and does not believe the NFL player has ever done anything illegal.
“My understanding is, Mr. Lehr was suspended and he moved on with his life,” said Mr. Warren, who lives in Tarrant County. “Matt made a mistake, and he admitted to it. He’s a good guy.
“He’s an NFL player. Why would he sell drugs, someone who makes that kind of money?”
Mr. Warren said that although he does not condone steroid use, he believes it is pervasive in professional sports.
Matt Lehr’s attorney is trying to discredit Jacobs suggesting that the case against Lehr will be dropped due to faulty information provided by Jacobs. But David Jacobs has denied providing federal prosecutors with the names of customers who bought steroids from him stressing that evidence and associations with Lehr were established independent of his cooperation.
Mr. Jacobs denies that he gave up any of his customers’ names to prosecutors. But he says during the course of their investigation of him – which he says dates back to 2005 – authorities tracked his associations and developed the information on their own…
Federal prosecutors are looking at bank records, correspondence and other evidence analyzing what investigators believe could outline transactions involving anabolic steroids and human growth hormone between Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Lehr.
One thing is for certain - the federal investigation in Texas is far from over. All parties involved in related steroid cases must continue to wait for the conclusion of their respective cases while the feds pursue anabolic steroids in football.
Prosecutors have re-opened the case of anti-aging doctor Ramon Scruggs in an effort to find more baseball players who have used anabolic steroids (”Inquiry Into Doctor May Link Players to Drugs,” March 12). In June 2004, Dr. Scruggs was formally accused of prescribing steroids and ancillary medications without justification over the internet to patients who he did not physically examine. He settled his case with the State of California in August 2006.
In the settlement, Scruggs agreed the state could prove the charges and accepted a $4,800 fine and 35 months of probation: during that time he is required to have an outside monitor, take various courses and cease prescribing over the Internet. The settlement was agreed to in August 2006 and took effect in March 2007.
Dr. Scruggs prescribed steroids to professional baseball players Troy Glaus and Scott Schoeneweis in 2003 and 2004. In the fall of 2007, this information was leaked to the media by the office of District Attorney David Soares which is leading the investigation of the steroid scandal involving Signature Pharmacy.
As a result of the leak, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California want to revisit Scrugg’s case fishing for additional Major League Baseball players who use steroids.
Ramon Scruggs, M.D. is a physician who, prior to his legal troubles, openly worked with bodybuilders visiting his New Hope Med website; he felt that the best way for a physician to effectively supervise the health of a steroid-using bodybuilder was to medically monitor their steroid use and assure that bodybuilders avoided potentially dangerous black market sources of anabolic steroids.
Dr. Scruggs explained his criteria for prescribing steroids to bodybuilders in an interview with Jason Mueller of Anabolic Extreme in 1999-2000.
[T]hey have to do extensive blood work, they have to fill out a very detailed questionnaire, and they have to have a 40-minute to hour interview with me. That’s basically where we decide if someone can do this. Now, I’ll admit to you that as I do this, my criteria have relaxed. Before I would only do this with athletes or with ordinary citizens if they had a limitation, if they were hypogonadal, if they were on the low side of normal on their blood work. I’ve gradually relaxed that to include people who would be quote unquote normal. You’ve got to realize that virtually everything hormonal is considered normal by the establishment. They have virtually no ability to look at, let’s say the estrogen/progesterone levels for a woman, and testosterone for men and women, and say anything much about them at all because everybody from age 12 to age 90 is considered normal.
Dr. Scruggs felt that he was doing the right thing by monitoring and prescribing steroids to bodybuilders.
I feel like I’ve been led along a certain path in life and it’s almost as if I’m supposed to do certain things by fate. I would have, had it been my choice, done things differently from how they’ve actually happened. But I accept that there are no mistakes, which God has us do the things He would have us do, despite what our little self may want, and I feel directed. So yes, I am concerned about it, but at the same time, I know I’m right! I feel very comfortable in the choices I’ve made and the reason for those choices. I know that I’m helping people far more than I’m hurting them. If you want to know the truth, I don’t like taking 22 or 23 year-old and putting them on steroids, it makes me nervous. Yet, I’d rather have them come to me and manage their steroid use, and then have them do it on their own.
Ramon Scruggs has and continues to pay a substantial penalty for having worked with bodybuilders in this capacity, including a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in October 2005.
Kelly Blair, the owner of 1-on-1 Elite Personal Fitness near Houston, was identified as the source of the human growth hormone used by baseball player Andy Pettitte. We reported allegations that Andy Pettitte obtained it from his father who allegedly obtained it from Blair; there were further suggestions that a former bodybuilder awaiting trial on murder charges supplied Blair’s gym with anabolic steroids.
Has Kelly Blair been falsely accused? The so-called steroid investigation is looking more and more like a steroid witch hunt with dubious accusations made against fitness professionals, particularly in the Houston area.
For the record, Kelly Blair denies that he ever gave growth hormone to the father of Andy Pettitte; but admits that if he were asked he would have shown no hesitation in helping Tommy Pettitte obtain human growth hormone for Andy (”Trainer denies he supplied HGH to Pettitte’s father,” March 14).
“If Tommy Pettitte would have come to me back in (2004) and asked for assistance in getting growth hormone, I wouldn’t have hesitated,” Blair told the Chronicle Friday morning. “I absolutely would have done it. Why wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t have thought he was getting it for Andy, so I would have done it in a heartbeat.
“But that didn’t happen.”
Blair sounds credible. He doesn’t deny his willingness to have helped secure HGH for Pettitte; he simply denies that he was ever asked.
Federal authorities have shifted significant resources to investigation of steroid trafficking within the United States and internationally. Given the prevalence of steroid use in professional bodybuilding, many observers felt it was only a matter of time before the federal investigations reached the sport of bodybuilding. When David Jacobs was arrested in May 2007 on steroid distribution charges, there was a great deal of anxiety within the sport; Jacobs had close ties with various professional bodybuilders and national level bodybuilding competitors in the State of Texas. The collective anxiety increased through November 2007 when court records revealed Jacobs had entered a plea agreement with federal prosecutors.
Sources close to the investigation have told MESO-Rx that, in spite of Jacobs close ties to the sports, bodybuilders were never the targets of the investigation.
Individuals who have worked with the assistant U.S. attorney Samuel Cantrell in the United States District Court (Eastern District of Texas) paint a picture of a young, fair and open-minded prosecutor who is very good at his job with a 93% conviction rate. We are told Cantrell is primarily concerned with disrupting the supply chain of anabolic steroids to (1) professional athletes who use them to gain an unfair advantage in sports competitions where performance enhancing drugs are explicitly prohibited, and (2) teenagers whose use may adversely affect their health during a critical developmental period.
Independent sources tell us that federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Texas could care less about bodybuilding. Cantrell purportedly does not display a moralistic condemnation of steroid use in bodybuilding; he is of the opinion that anabolic steroid use is an overt part of the sport which has no explicit proscription of the use of performance enhancing drugs by any of its competitors at the novice, amateur or professional levels. It’s obvious that everyone in pro bodybuilding uses them.
Individuals in Cantrell’s office have even expressed admiration at the dedication and determination exhibited by bodybuilders. While they do not see steroid use in bodybuilding as morally “bad”, but make no mistake that they believe the illicit use, sale and distribution is “wrong” simply because it is against the law.
Even in the case of David Jacobs where the defendant had obvious ties to various competitive bodybuilders, a source familiar with his case files informs us that Jacobs was only asked about two pro bodybuilders and only because of the extensive photographic and videographic evidence linking Jacobs to Branch Warren and Art Atwood.
According to one source, Branch Warren was never investigated after Jacobs denied Warren ever had any involvement. Furthermore, federal investigators had no evidence to suggest Warren was ever involved in the distribution of anabolic steroids. Friends of Branch Warren confirm his adamant stand against involvement in steroid distribution.
On the other hand, federal prosecutors had two years of detailed records, including photographs and video surveillance documenting a relationship between David Jacobs and Art Atwood; the same source tells us that Jacobs basically only confirmed the evidence detailing the Jacobs-Atwood relationship.
The damage to the sport of bodybuilding will be limited since bodybuilding is not the apparent target of the Texas steroid investigations.
IFBB Pro Bodybuilder Art Atwood was approached by the Dallas/Fort Worth CBS affiliate and asked about his involvement in a federal steroid investigation. Atwood was asked about potential steroid charges that he may face, concern about jail, and his association with David Jacobs who has agreed to a plea bargain in the steroid investigation.
University of Mississippi quarterback recruit, Jared Foster, was arrested for selling anabolic steroids by Madison County Sheriff’s Department Narcotics Division. Foster had been attending classes and informally working out with the Ole Miss football team. In light of the steroid arrest, the University of Mississippi has kicked Foster off the team and has withdrawn his full college scholarship to play football at Ole Miss.
Two years ago, when Foster was a senior in high school, police discovered anabolic steroids in his home. He was arrested on underage drinking charges. The underage drinking charges were dropped and no steroid possession charges were ever filed because Foster agreed to cooperate with local authorities in a joint steroid investigation by the Madison Police Department and the Madison County Sheriff’s Department.
Foster is being detained at the Madison County Detention Center on the steroid-related charges.
