From Anthony Roberts Blog .....
Breakup of Drug Ring Is Momentary Victory By DUFF WILSONPublished: September 29, 2007, NY Ti****n Monday a federal prosecutor and a Drug EnforcementAdministration chief each said that international law enforcementactions to cut off the flow of steroid powder from China to theUnited States were “aiming at the head of the dragon.” But that is the wrong metaphor, said Anthony Roberts, a New Jerseyman who has written three books on steroids and bodybuilding andoperates a blog. “It’s not a dragon, it’s a hydra,” Roberts said in a telephoneinterview yesterday. “Once there’s a gap in the market, people fillthat gap.” Indeed, federal officials said that one crackdown after another hadshown how difficult it was to break up the sprawling market forillegal performance-enhancing drugs. “We’re cutting off many heads,” Steve Robertson, a special agentand spokesman for the D.E.A., said yesterday. “Will new heads grow back? Yeah. That’s the nature of the drugbusiness.” In 2002, the D.E.A. knocked out the biggest supplier of illegalsteroids to the United States to date in Operation TKO againstLaboratorios Ttokkyo, a Mexican factory marketing steroids andketamine as veterinary products. In 2005, Operation Gear Grinder, billed by the D.E.A. as thelargest steroid bust in history, led to the prosecution of eightother Mexican factories that supplied an estimated 82 percent ofillegal steroids in the United States. This week the D.E.A. announced a new record for the largest steroidenforcement action: Operation Raw Deal against the more than 124people and 56 underground laboratories that had been buying steroidpowder from China, the source of 99 percent of the chemicalsentering the illicit market, according to the D.E.A. Enforcement officials trumpeted their successes at news conferencesin five cities Monday, aimed at warning the youth of America aboutthe physical and criminal dangers of steroid use. But they wouldnever say they had won. “Drug trafficking organizations and the individuals they supplywill attempt to adapt to the success of Operation Raw Deal,” JohnP. Gilbride, special agent in charge of the New York office of theD.E.A., said in an interview Thursday. “What we will do is to be diligent in terms of identifying any newtrends.” Two investigators who worked on the global steroid cases, who spokeon the condition of anonymity because their investigation wascontinuing, described each case as comparable to plugging holes ina dike. “We figured we would have a big impact if we shut down Mexico,” oneof the investigators said. “What we didn’t see coming is we createda much larger and more complex problem for the D.E.A. We didn’t hitthe source.” The Chinese steroid powder suppliers and American undergroundlaboratories became blatant in advertising and selling throughpassword-protected Web sites, anonymous e-mail services andsecretive financial transactions. Surveillance and federalsubpoenas scooped up all those avenues of information, theinvestigators said. In February, officials for the D.E.A. and the Food and DrugAdministration traveled to Beijing to tell their counterparts aboutthe flood of different steroid powders coming from China. Theywanted to give the Chinese ample time to fix the problem before the2008 Olympics, the investigators said. Within a week, the Chinesegovernment posted a new list of chemicals that were illegal toexport. That helped dry up the supply to underground laboratories for awhile and accelerated the evidence gathering against dealers whothought they could “wait out the storm,” the investigators said. Operation Raw Deal was brought home with an international takedowndate in 27 states and 9 foreign countries. Federal authorities have given the Chinese government theirdossiers on 37 companies involved in the steroid trade. “HittingChina we hope will have more impact than anything we have donedomestically,” one of the investigators said. Web sites that advertised steroid powder are still underinvestigation. Robertson said the largest distributors would betargeted. Federal agents are also trying to identify tens of thousands ofbuyers through shipping, financial and e-mail records and say theyplan to pursue many of them. “We haven’t even scrubbed the surface yet,” one investigator said.“We’re essentially dismantling the industry