The Rise and Fall of Ttokkyo Laboratories

NOTE FROM AUTHOR: From time to time, by position in the steroid world allows me to meet some interesting characters to say the least. Well, this is one of those times. I’ve been able to interview someone who was involved with the former Ttokkyo labs, at a very high level. His story is a cautionary tale, and not a “how-to”…he lived the steroid dealers life, at the highest level, and paid for it with prison time. I’ve decided not to edit this interview, even though he trashes some steroid sites as well as major people in the anabolic steroid world. Remember, this is not necessarily the opinion of Anthony Roberts, but rather is 100% the opinion of the interviewee. Alright…here it is…

Anthony Roberts: Ok…without telling us too much about you, can you let us know what your experience with steroids is?

Anon: Well, “without telling us to me about you” needs to be addressed first. I have already been convicted of several things and been through a couple prison systems. I need to state, right from the start, that some of the things I am going to talk about I did indeed experience myself. In some cases, a friend of mine did some of the stuff I will talk about. I can’t remember. Basically, if you are from the government and reading this, I assume you know who I am. If I didn’t already cop to something that you are reading, you should assume that my friend did it. Back then I was pretty doped up most of the time, so things get a little blurry every now and again. I suspect that other, non-G-men will recognize who I am as well. I’ll say something to you later on, if I feel like it. Although it should be obvious that I have the freedom to say whatever I want and artistic license to say it however I want to, if you are reading this and from the government, know that it is a bunch of flat-out lies. I don’t ever know what a steroid is. Cool?

Anyhow, I have a little bit of experience with steroids. To put it bluntly, I had the unfortunate distinction of being a fairly important part of what I consider to be the premier anabolics distribution and manufacturing operations of all time: Laboratorios Ttokkyo. Obviously, a white kid from the ‘burbs doesn’t just fly to Mexico City and apply for the job I had. It was a long and very unique road that we paved and led us to fortune, albeit brief and fleeting.

Anthony Roberts: Can you give us some back story here?

Anon: A little back story might be helpful in understanding the whole of things. I always remark to myself that really, anyone could have done what I did as long as they paid attention to the landscape of the time and wanted what I wanted as badly as I did. It’s kind of like starting a UG lab now; anyone who really wants to can find a way to import powder, a way to get vials and equipment, and start producing some garbage that people will happily buy. Most people are content to just buy it and spend the money, but there are those of us who are first compelled to buy 3, sell 2, and get a freebie and then wind up getting rich because other people are lazy (or smart).

A long time ago, when I first saw actual banner ads for powder suppliers, I got flashbacks of the beginning of my end. You guys are a bunch of retards, with your boards and pseudo-security. People from other countries sponsor your board and it’s not illegal in their country to sell steroids. You think that makes you safe. You’re just advertising for someone who is doing something perfectly legal, right? You really think it is that simple? You are providing a vehicle to enable illegal transactions. It’s like having banner ads for fertilizer on a militia website. I won’t harp on this yet, but I probably will. You are retards, just waiting for the Fed to take interest. Now, I was a retard once, too – so I can say that. You are a bunch of retards and you are going to fall. I’ll get into why later, if there is time.

Anthony Roberts: How did you start out in this particular line of work?

Anon: I started off like anyone else really; I just wanted to be bigger than the next guy. That mindset wound up transferring to my business approach as well and both got me into a boatload of shit eventually. I started off reading the boards, researching, learning, and pretty quickly I was a regular on ‘Bolex and Varix and a few other discussion boards. Its important to remember when you hear me talking about those days that the ‘net was much smaller back then and there were maybe half a dozen steroid-related websites. They didn’t have central repositories for profiles, cycles, and everything else that each board has today. Shit was kind of scattered, and Brian Raupp was ahead of his time, centralizing information and bringing clientele to himself. I don’t know Brian personally. From what I understand, he just got out of Federal Prison himself, after fucking up on supervised release. To me, that means he had a chance to not go away at all but blew it by being a dipshit and continuing to sell while on probation. I was supposed to sell him a bunch of shit one time but somewhere along the way the product was taken by the feds and the deal wasn’t lucrative enough to make me want to do it again. I’ll sell you 1000 bottles if I’m making $5 a piece and it’s easy for me to get the bottles in my hand, but that’s one of the logistical problems behind being a large importer and distributor: shipping volumes of product. It makes much more sense for me to get 1000 bottles and sell to two or three dudes who don’t want anyone to know who I am for fear of losing their client base. That way, I can mark things up $35 a unit and still get rid of it inside of a day. It’s the same number of boxes, but I’m making $35k instead of $5k and I don’t have to deal with people in the federal spotlight. If I set it up right, I’d never even see the boxes and I’d never even know what my customers looked like. I didn’t quite do it that way, but I never wanted to be in the spotlight. I guess that’s lesson one that Ttokkyo should have learned; keep thy ass out of the spotlight.

Anyhow, the boards were like the Wild West back then. Anyone remember HumanSaurus Rex? A good dude. How about Simian? Another good dude. How about Damian Borleone and Leroy? Chances are, if you knew them, you got locked up like me.

Oh, but wait. Another lesson: the Feds get everyone to roll. Some do it much more quickly and easily than others. Right now there is a fellow named GAC (Red Star of China) or Brock or Bruce sitting in the can. The Feds visited him but didn’t arrest or charge him. Wow. Watch what happens in China now. Tell me if it is a coincidence. (Note from Anthony Roberts: This interview was conducted well before the recent Chinese powder busts…scary, huh?)

Anthony Roberts: What do you think of the state of internet steroid discussion boards?

Anon: Today, everyone and their uncle’s sister is a mod or some sort of VIP Member of a useless board that regurgitates the same profiles and bullshit, making people think that using steroids is actually a complicated endeavor. Back then, the boards were either owned by dealers and used as vehicle to sell their product, or the boards had resident, US-based dealers that catered to the members of said board. People bought the big drugs: dbol, test, deca, winny, and Anadrol. Nobody gave a shit about trenbolone laureate acetate 17a precursors. You know, there really are a bunch of retards out there now. They ever have antiestrogen precursors. Makes me want to puke. People are actually buying HGH FRAGMENTS! Hello! These things cannot possibly work. Ask any scientist who isn’t selling them. The entire protein must be there in order to be recognized. A fragment is useless. It’s like sawing one tooth out of a key and selling it as a key fragment. Sure, its part of a key, but its not going to turn any fucking locks. Anyhow…

Regardless of the politics behind the boards, very few people actually knew anything about steroids back then. The boards were a way to get your email address out there and to post “list me” in a thread so you could find a supplier. It was a ton of flaming and bullshit. I remember bringing down a board over and over again by pasting a little JavaScript into my post. You got redirected to gay.com or whatever. It was fun, and it certainly wasn’t the structured force that it is today. I guess that holds true for the entire internet and spectrum of social networking applications.

The only real book out there was that piece of crap by Bill Phillips (before he “sold out” literally and figuratively with Body For Life and make millions upon millions in addition to the Entrepreneur of the Year award). A cohesive set of steroid profiles had yet to be written. You had to Google a little more intensely than you do now to find your answers, and nobody wanted to do that. It didn’t take long for me, through a little extra effort, to become a pretty well-respected and regarded. If you could talk about what is really a pretty simple subject and use big words, draw clear metaphors, have anything insightful to say without copying and pasting (or if you were really good at pasting from Medline/PubMed), you became well-known pretty quickly. Because of this, I made a lot of good contacts for my personal gear. I was punctilious with my posts and people assumed that I was somebody.

That translated into good contacts. Specifically, I met people located closer to the Mexican border. The guys in NY had Brighton Beach and the Russians and lots of Euro gear. There were a few of those guys. But more interesting to me were the dudes out in California – all fairly spoiled white boys besides two in particular that I knew of – and they were all competing for business, doing crazy things with their prices if you came upon them through the right channels. I had a bunch of middle-level dealers that couldn’t keep up with me anymore, and they wound up referring me to their dealers. Why they did this is beyond me, but they did and it worked out well for me. You’d like to think that they were just good guys, looking out for a ‘bro” – but that’s bullshit. The fact is, I think I know why they did it. They made more selling to 20 different people than they made selling to me, and you can only get so much product shipped every week. I’d take it all from all of them. It didn’t make sense for them to turn down my business and it didn’t make sense to do business with me. So, they passed me on in hopes that the “bro” factor would get them in better with their suppliers. It didn’t work out like that. I wound up being their suppliers’ exclusive customer in many cases. Money is money and money isn’t a friend.

Anthony Roberts: So I imagine that you were a big time local dealer at that point?

Anon: Locally, I cut everyone’s throat in a real guerrilla move that I didn’t intend as such. I really had no idea that people were spending $90 on a bottle of test, even by the 100 count, and so when I started offering T200’s at literally 1/3rd of what anyone else was offering them at, I sold 3 times as much (the demand was bigger than the supply, apparently) and had a very, very secure customer base that nobody could hope to steal. My customers protected me because they didn’t want anyone knowing who I was and getting to me. I started supplying the local suppliers, then the not-so-local guys, then a bit more than that. I got myself a nice new luxury car. I had a few affairs. I was making chump change, but I only call it chump change because of what would happen later on.

So I am becoming a fairly substantial dealer, and it is happening on two fronts; there is my local area that I am selling in: far removed from Tijuana and the world of storage units, border crossings, and kidnapping; and there is the southern CA world of exactly that, and more. I was bicoastal, with more friends and associates out there than over here, and I spent a lot of time going back and forth to hang out and network and see things first-hand. If you’ve never been in a Granero during the early part of this century, you missed something really unique. It was exciting to be a part of all this criminality and shadiness. It was like living in some sort of movie for a white-bread kid like myself.

As I was saying, I became a relatively large customer for more than one guy in the San Diego area and eventually had to strike deals with both of them that they wouldn’t do business with anyone besides me. I could certainly keep them busy, and having them fucking around with dinky ass $5k orders was stupid for everyone when I could do four of five times that and pay on time for sure in full. I had half a dozen cell phones, one for each of them, and I knew that what I was doing was not that illegal anyhow. 5 year maximum sentence, and that was only if you got caught with a stadium full of dbol. I felt like I had a pretty good sense of the risk to benefit ratio, and the ROI (return on investment) was retarded. I had a good thing. I thought. And it made me read more about my business, study older compounds, alternative drugs that were not available in the states (like trenbolone) and generally think of ways that more money could be made, with a higher degree of safety. I figured that if I ever DID get caught, Id have a few million hidden away somewhere and I’d do the measly 6 months in jail. Whatever. Who cares? Pay me a million a month and I’ll do a couple years in the can. Who wouldn’t?

Well, I wouldn’t. Not now. But it sounds good, right?

Anthony Roberts: Sounds like a decent deal, actually… but how did all of this translate into you making your contacts in Mexico?

Anon: For a long time I avoided talking to anyone in Mexico who would have been a good supplier for me. I never intended on cutting anyone’s throat. I truly didn’t. As far as I was concerned, my suppliers deserved to be paid for taking all the risk that they took. In any given transaction, you have essentially X tasks involved. You have to buy the stuff (transfer money to someone in Mexico). You have to have everything crossed. You have to secure the stuff once it is crossed. You have to pack and ship it. That all happened “over there.” I had to receive the stuff. I had to dump it off on someone and get paid. I had to send cash back to CA or Mexico for the next one. I thought that a good 70 percent of the risk was “over there” between the Granero and Chula Vista, CA. Once it was crossed I saw very little risk after it left the San Diego airport or the Rialto hub.

This might be a good time for me to mention a few things about shipping. For one, every time you use anything besides regular USPS Priority mail, they can open your box just because they feel like it. There is good and bad about ground, next day air, UPS, FedEx, DHL (tons of issues with them) and USPS. The only thing that consistently helped me as a dealer was overnighting packages. Sure, its riskier and the box stands out a little more if it originates from or heads to one of the “hot spots” (NY, S. California, Miami), but if there is a problem with your package you know about it before it gets to you and you can structure to avoid problems. UPS told me that the Feds had my package on more than one occasion, and the infamous “Status: Exception / Forwarded to destination” helped me avoid controlled deliveries more than once. I have seen more than my share of controlled deliveries and have never been busted myself, but if the Feds get involved and it goes down like they want it to, there is always big trouble. Hopefully I will have time to get a little more into how the whole Federal drug charge thing works. We’ll see. This is supposed to be a short interview and I think Anthony is probably already thinking that I have said more than he wanted. It isn’t so easy for me to go back and relive this shit, so when I do, I have to set aside time to feel like a schmuck and I did that today. Today, I am a schmuck telling you stuff that schmucks might want to know.

Anthony Roberts: SO you were moving some decent amounts of product by then. Why get greedy?

Anon: So yeah, I was moving a good amount of product and felt pretty good about my security and personal safety, but once I started to push the envelope and move more than could easily fit into a box (about 200 bottle can go in a small box and not make a scene) I started having issues with transporting everything. Once you start mailing thousands of units, you have to work out the logistics of “where is it all going to land?” and “how much will that box weigh?” and “how many times can I use this address?” and “what MBE are they going to mail it from this time and is the UPS guy that we know even working today?” and “what if some FedEx knucklehead drops the box and I get 500 cc of oil leaking out the side because Juanito forgot to wrap it in a plastic bag?” and “will my Winny’s freeze in the plane during December?” (Answer: they might) and a bunch of other stuff that wouldn’t occur to you until you actually tried to move a thousand 10ml bottles a week across the country in a timely and secure fashion while not establishing a pattern and remaining anonymous.

We wound up using vehicles to transport everything. Paid drivers who were very well taken care of. But you know, anytime you add another person to the equation, you are exponentially increasing your risk. More on that later as well…

Anthony Roberts: SO where were you, personally, at that point?

Anon: All this shit was going on. I was making more money every week. It was a veritable gold mine, and I had a million ideas about how to make business better, decrease risk, turn the Mexican scene around, and change the scene for the better. I started to tell my suppliers what I was thinking and people started to listen. Back then, you would get a Reforvit in a bottle that had markings on the outside to show you how much oil was in there and thick globs of glue that seeped through the crooked, tissue-thin crooked label. Mexican products really did lack that crap that Americans eat up. You see it even in the supermarket. People buy the shit with the nice packaging and flashy label. Its human nature, and a vet company just didn’t need to cater to that type of consumer until the opportunity to capitalize on it was discovered.

Mexico was getting a really bad rap, and since I specialized in Mexican gear even though we could order tubs of dbol from Thailand for $40 (Note From Anthony Roberts: A “tub” of Dbol is 1,000 tabs) and have things sent from Europe without too much difficulty, the focus was on Granero products because they were there and Mexicans liked making money on Mexican products. They had more control over it. Mexico was always looked down upon, and it bothered me. It still gets a bad rap, to an extent, but back then you had serious gear snobs who would poo-poo Brovel while totally overlooking the fact that Steris’ Phoenix, AZ plant was shut down for being unsterile and underdosing product.

Anthony Roberts: So was steroid dealing your “job” at that point?

Anon: I was a full time drug dealer by now, thinking along the lines of a regular businessperson, I guess. I and always had a penchant for business. I wanted to grow an empire, because it was there, begging to be built. Like I said, I really think almost anyone could have done what I did. You almost couldn’t get in trouble for steroids back then. If I told you about the sizes of the boxes I had mailed to me, from within the United States, seized by authorities without significant follow-up, you’d be shocked. It really seemed like nobody cared all that much, but I knew that as soon as you started thumbing your nose at the government, they would have to step in and do something. I always said that if they could look the other way, they would. We didn’t wind up letting them, much like the powder and UG lab guys are not letting them now.

My friend suggested that Ttokkyo do something to set them apart from all the other vet pharm producers in Mexico. He suggested that they do something like build better packaging and spend some money on ink that didn’t run, good quality paper, nicely crimped vials, and throw some shrink wrap around the glossy boxes. He suggested that they go ahead and have a US-based lab run assays of their product and post them online, verifiable and for the world to see.

They listened. I think it was partially just a way to placate a big customer at first, but when this same person met with the bigwigs of the company and told them about putting padding in the bottles so the tabs wouldn’t rattle when they were mailed, about producing a trenbolone product even though it was so much more expensive than the classic vet drugs, and boost the dosages of everything so it was more easily used by human beings, the Good Company listened to it’s customer base. At least, they listened to my buddy.

Nobody made 10 mg dbol back then. Ttokkyo fucked up a little by making the 10mg tablet almost identical to the 5 mg tab (people will pay a buck a tab and only a buck a tab in lots of gyms). Still, the investment in collateral materials, packaging, lab work, and a fairly intense viral marketing campaign took off. There were some of us board members posting pictures of products before they were released, to generate buzz. All you had to do was send something to a board owner once in awhile and they would let you post whatever you wanted. Plus, every board wanted to be the board that had the first pictures of Trenbol 75 or Deca300 or whatever.

Some of us made sure to let the world know of the difference between Ttokkyo and Brovel or Tornel. It was obvious when you saw the products, but we had to get people to order the products in order for the word to spread and for the actuality of what they had accomplished to be recognized. The board members listened, bought products, and Ttokkyo was quickly recognized as something unique. They set a standard that Quality Vet almost immediately followed and became the norm.

Interestingly enough, I am almost certain that Ttokkyo can attribute a degree of its initial success to its name. People actually thought it was from Japan. They wanted “that Japanese stuff” and apparently didn’t see the huge “HECHO EN MEXICO” on the bottle or the SAGAR numbers. Whatever.

Anthony Roberts: Looking back, what do you think about that now?

Anon: Its also interesting to me now, looking back, that the same things people held against Mexican gear back in the day are completely overlooked and even justified today when it comes to UG products. They used to call Mexican products “bathtub” gear and talk intense shit about the lack of controls and not being able to trust something that wasn’t regulated, something that was Mexican.

Now you have UG stuff showing up in some of the Anabolic guidebooks and listed as “legit” – one of the biggest mistakes you can make and most irresponsible things you can do, if you ask me. I say this for a variety of reasons, and I say this as a human being who wants what is best for humankind. One reason this is wrong is that it is misleading and unsafe. These UG products are NOT legit. They are NOT actual pharmaceutical products, produced with any kind of control or academic oversight. These “UG” are made by unemployed losers looking to make a buck and specifically NOT looking to better the human race. The sit there, all sweaty, weighing powder with a $100 scale, doling it out with a plastic spoon, and working with tools from Vials-R-Us and Home Depot. This shit just isn’t a good idea. I know a couple guys who actually died from staph infections related to UG gear. And no, it wasn’t because they didn’t swab their ass with isopropyl first. These were professional juiceheads. They didn’t post on the boards, so you didn’t hear about them. They were just regular amateur bodybuilders trying to do what they do, and I am very sure that there are more than a few others out there who died because of bunk gear (the same shit that Llewellen says is real). (Note From Anthony Roberts: Ok…I typically wouldn’t let someone attack another steroid author like this, regardless of my personal feelings on him, but I agreed to let this article be uncensored, so that’s what it is)

The second reason it is a big mistake to represent “UG” gear as legit is the basic fact that you cannot guarantee these UG labs will be doing the same thing on Friday that they were on Thursday, or that the labels of identical products were even printed by people who know each other. You are essentially legitimizing the illegitimate, and that’s an awful thing to do. Nobody wins in that scenario, except the publisher of the book and the UG lab that is feeding him kickbacks. All the boards with sponsors are going to be indicted or are already in bed with the feds. I don’t care what country they are “located” in. I know too much to believe any of that “our owner is in Australia” bullshit. I will spew more about why I don’t believe this and how I know it to be bullshit later.

Anthony Roberts: Getting back on track here…

Anon: To get back to the point, because I rambled a hell of a lot there, I started off as a user, realized, “holy shit, I can buy this crap at 1/10th of what it is costing me around here if I go online,” and started supplying a lot of my area. I had a few sources I went through at first, but for a variety of reasons I had to eliminate the middleman. I didn’t get too much into those reasons, but I will summarize them by saying that along with money and youth comes bad decisions, often drug use, and a lot of laziness. I would have LIKED to keep my suppliers between Mexico and me. I was making enough money. I never wanted to go to Mexico, much less meet anyone of any criminal stature out there. To me, that spelled trouble. I didn’t want to be the guy crossing the border and doing business directly with anyone – a Granero, a salesman, or a distributor. But, it became a necessity, and when the owner of a multi-million dollar pharmaceutical company asks your opinion in relation to product R&D, you are flattered. You meet with him. You love the free t-shirts and watches and drinks and women. You eat it up. Remember, Ttokkyo was at one point, before all this shit, a very legit and respectable business. They had a large product line and produced a huge variety of medications, including Ketamine.

It all happened very fast. I went from making $500 a week to $10k a week within a few months, selling only anabolics and androgens. I sold Clomid or some bullshit ancillary as a favor once in a while, but there was no demand for anti-estrogens or the like. Back then, I made as much selling gear as many mid-level coke and heroin dealers make. I can attribute it almost entirely to being in the right place at the right time and having some kind of perverted urge to be a bad guy. Add to the equation the fact that I have a good word, always paid my debts on time and in full, can speak intelligently about the subject, and made sure everyone was getting a cut of whatever was made. I made the people around me rich. They wanted me to succeed. Obviously. Everyone connected to me was busier than they could handle with orders and crossing and shipping and selling and celebrating. It was a hell of a lot of fun, back then. It grew like drunken wildfire.

Anthony Roberts: Ok…so you were involved with the biggest name in steroids at the time…what was that like?

Anon: It was like any other business engagement, really. Well, I say that now, but at the time it was a lot of shady shit in rooms packed with steroid boxes and chicken crates as well as fancy conference rooms and bodyguards. Once I started working with them directly, I had to have bodyguards. People were kidnapped on a regular basis, and I was starting to get recognized around the area. I knew they were sizing me up and it worried me a little, but the guy who owned a Granero and took care of much of my needs at the time set me up with some sort of organization that provided protection. A lot of the bodyguards were young, and I always assumed they had guns, but I never saw them and never asked to. Guns rarely came into play for me, and when they did, it was on this side of the border with one notable exception where a good dude was killed.

Hell, money is money, right? Sell coke or sell widgets… if you sell enough of them people are going to target you. I was talking to a guy the other day who got robbed and had his wife kidnapped for memory chips, and this was in the United States. People will kill you for money, and money is what the Feds follow and are most interested in, if you ask me.

Anthony Roberts: So at this point, you were pretty much “the man” right?

Anon: Like I said before, having a hotline to Ttokkyo was cool. It had a lot of perks. Women, money, VIP treatment, and I went almost six years without even thinking about working. What we did was work, but it wasn’t work like regular people do. It was fun, and the money was play money. You could go into any store and get virtually anything you wanted. I had three luxury cars and two trucks. I didn’t have any place to park them. I had two Rolexes and only one wrist. I had a closet full of $300 shirts and $400 shoes. I had whatever I wanted. I don’t know how to really explain what it was like. It was very stressful. I lived online, watching tracking results and being scared to death of seeing “Status: Exception.” I was on drugs of various sorts (I could get whatever dope I wanted, so I tried different things and liked some quite a bit), and I grew increasingly paranoid. I was a mess. I was on so many steroids that I honestly couldn’t say what I was on at any given time. I’ve used every single anabolic agent I know of besides some of the more recent things like esterless EQ and whatever. It was really bad for me physically and mentally while feeling pretty fucking amazing physically and mentally. I slept a lot. I was never home. I don’t know how those two things are true at the same time, but they were. I was on call 24 hours a day, because I had business partners all over the world and God forbid I would miss a call that might make me a couple grand.

Anthony Roberts: Alright…I’m starting to get the picture…but exactly did you do with them or for Ttokkyo?

Anon: This is a bit of a touchy question, since there are documents out there stating what I did for them and I wouldn’t want to give anyone the idea that they didn’t have the complete picture. I’ll tell you what my buddy did. My buddy was a hand-to-hand dealer, largely. He was Ttokkyo’s 2nd biggest customer through this Granero, and he had everything delivered to him, preferring to do things face to face. Ttokkyo had this neat little club you could join if you spent enough money with the Granero and they liked you well enough. Orders sent to Ttokkyo over the web went to the Granero. If the order was from America, the customer got an email saying that they should contact soandso@hushmail.com or whatever. Soandso would be a guy like my buddy, who would have a $1000 minimum order or something like that and would have your order shipped directly from the guys in Mexico. For example, I know a guy who sat in NY and took orders sent to Ttokkyo. He had an account with the Granero. Once he had enough orders, he sent an email to a guy in Mexico detailing what product should go to what address. The Mexicans would cross the shit and mail it. The guy sitting in NY never saw the boxes. Just the money. It was a sweet gig if you could get it and you know, didn’t mind being an international drug smuggler, dealer, whatever.

Anthony Roberts: I suppose it’s time for the million dollar question. What was, in your opinion, the cause for their downfall?

Anon: This is complex. I will say that a major contributor to their downfall will be a major contributor to the downfall of the powder suppliers, GenSci, and the like. (Note from Anthony Roberts: This article was written before GenSci went down!) They marketed towards Americans. You just can’t do that. That is the thumbing of the nose that I was talking about. They had an English version of their website and spoke of the effects of EQ and dosing of EQ in humans. We all know, there is not one product produced anywhere in the world that is boldenone-based and intended for use in humans. They built their website meta-tags around words like “Special K” and other things that were clearly designed to bring a specific type of traffic to their site. They had established a whole enterprise designed to cross and sell illegal drugs to Americans.

And they made a LOT of money.

Anthony Roberts: Same old story I suppose. Do you think that selling recreational drugs like K was the beginning of the end for Ttokkyo?

Anon: With Ketamine, you have a whole new audience and the people involved with club drugs are involved with things like E and whatever. These things have major penalties attached to them. Yeah, I know, the penalty for K is that same as the penalty for juice, and that penalty isn’t much. You’re missing the point and don’t understand how this shit works.

I didn’t get charged for this in the end, but one of my drivers got pulled over with 16,000 bottles of K. That is not a big deal when it comes to the amount of drug. Yeah, it was the largest seizure of K ever in the United States, but still, it was not Class I or anything like that. It had a 5 year maximum.

What kicks you in the ass is the other charges that come. If you spend money on drugs, you’re laundering money. Money laundering charges are harsh. And you get the CCE (Continuing Criminal Enterprise) charges thrown at you that carry a 20 year mandatory or something like that. I forget the exact figures, thank God. And you get aiding and abetting. And you get Conspiracy to Distribute and Conspiracy to Launder Money, Conspiracy to this, that, the other thing.

Conspiracy is when two or more people decide to break the law and make any steps towards that end. We can sit in front of a bank and talk about robbing it, but that’s bullshit. That’s nothing. As soon as I buy a ski mask though, we are both guilty of the entire conspiracy. So is the guy who lent me the $5 to buy the ski mask, if he knew what we were doing. So everyone from the crosser to the guy who is selling 10 bottles at a time down the line and everyone in between is a “spoke on the wheel” where the wheel is the conspiracy.

And heresy is admissible in Federal Court. A dude who knew the kind of car I drove was able to get me indicted on heresy. He said the K was mine. They asked what he knew about me. He didn’t know my name. He just knew where I was from and what I drove. They asked who got him the driving job. He gave up his buddy. Based on what his buddy said, which was that it was mine- they came and got me. It was all heresy. They had no hard evidence. Just circumstantial shit that would never hold up in state court.

So based on what two guys said… two guys who lives thousands of miles away from me and had none of my real information, they were able to hit me with an 11 count indictment for those bottles. 5 year max? Please. I was looking at 30-plus years once you figured in the money charges and CCE charges. Look this shit up. Check out the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and the Sentencing Grid. Its no joke. And a guy like Bruce who owns guns in doubly fucked because even if they are legal, you get bumped up 3 levels for each gun you have. He had 10? Something like that? That is 30 levels. A level 30 charge in and of itself is 25 years or so.

Anthony Roberts: So federal charges are some rough shit, huh?

Anon: This isn’t the place for a long discussion on Federal sentencing, but basically they use a grid. Your offense is a designated level of severity. That is your base offense level. You get 3 levels off for pleading guilty, up to 5 more for cooperating, and 3 added if you are a ringleader. These are upward and downward departures. A base offense level of 12 or whatever, something small that means 12 months in jail, can easily become a level 28 with the addition of a ringleader departure, a gun departure, and a couple departures for being near a school or whatever. The money charges compound your base offense level and that level 12 becomes a level 22 very quickly. Your little box of 200 Deca amps becomes 120 months in jail before you even know what happened. I didn’t realize any of this shit. Who does, until it is too late? Oh yeah, and if you talk about a deal in your car, they get the car. And if you wife was around, they will charge her with conspiracy just to put pressure on you to roll. Or they will take your kids. Or they will charge your Mom. They will do whatever they have to do to put major pressure on you because lots of the time they DON’T want you but they will rip your ass open to get the guy that they do want. It makes me laugh when people think they are safe because they are only buying small amounts and say “they don’t go DOWN the ladder.” Yeah, they do. All the time. They go down the ladder to get a firm foothold and move up the ladder.

Anthony Roberts: Yeah…I got rolled on when I went to prison for Ecstacy. I had 118 tabs, and the guy they caught had 20 hits and rolled on me right away. He would have done no time, instead I was sentenced to 13 months, on possession with no intent to deal for a first time non-violent offence, and got out with doing half of that…

Anon: People roll like logs. I honestly don’t blame them. I wouldn’t do 15 years for swoledude@hushmail.com no matter what. Fuck Swole. I did under 2 years and I lost family while I was in there. Do you know how much it sucks to hear your family cry, “Why can’t you be here? We need you!” Do you know how much it sucks to miss your daughter’s first birthday? How much it hurts to lose a grandparent or a parent while locked up? You think anyone is going to do that because it’s the right thing to do? Its not the right fucking thing to do, unless you are a damn asshole.

With that being so perfectly fucking obvious, it should be clear that unless you are prepared to make the decision to turn everyone you care about in, you have no business selling steroids in modern-day America. There is too much money in it.

And for Ttokkyo, that money came largely from Ketamine. My buddy got bottles of K for $8 each and sold them for $32 each by the 10,000. He could do this every 2 weeks, limited only by how long it takes to drive across the country and back. After expenses, that equals around a quarter million dollars profit a month. Now, we are talking real money. This gets the attention of everyone. This is serious money, and this isn’t counting the little shit, the $30k deals you are making here and there because you sent a few boxes to someone direct, or decided to tell people that the peso went up in value and you need an extra $2 a bottle this time, while it really went down and you were saving a buck and the crosser gave you a discount. There was a ton of money to be made in Ketamine.

Did I mention that I never wanted to sell K? I didn’t. But I sold 1000 bottles one time, make something like $20k in an hour, and decided that it might be worth doing some K deals for a while.

Anthony Roberts: So everyone was making money hand over fist, right?

Anon: Ttokkyo saw more money than me and my buddy combined, times ten. They were rocking. And when money like that is up for grabs and the people making it are being active assholes, there is going to be trouble. They were out there on the net, taking orders from everyone, making stupid people rich and people were getting murdered over it.

Anthony Roberts: So how did you get pinched?

Anon: They picked me up first. I was set up pretty nicely by a fella that went by the name of DB and his buddy Leroy. Leroy is running around Thailand now, from what I heard on the boards. I don’t go on the boards much anymore, but when I got out I did visit the ones that were left and noticed a post about this. Of course, I don’t talk to anyone in those circles anymore. Why would I? They are all a bunch of “bros” that fuck each other over and they have no idea of loyalty. These people posting how Satchboogie or whoever is such a good dude, he is their buddy, are retards. When it comes down to it, you are money. You are nothing to him or any dealer. Yeah, you can chill and have some drinks, but they will roll on you in a second and you can’t blame them for it because you would too. Say all you want that you wouldn’t. I know better, and everyone who has been there knows better.

I was lucky in that I pled guilty right off the bat and so they used my guilty plea to leverage their case against other codefendants. I didn’t have to testify or mention anyone to anyone. I said that I did it and the other guys said everything else. Who cares? Once you go away there is no loyalty and nobody rewards anything. The Sopranos is bullshit. The Godfather is outdated. Dudes get life for a bag of crack, first offense, and that’s fucking it.

Anthony Roberts: So you are saying that the “Ttokkyo Steroid bust” was actually a recreational drug bust? It was all about the K?

Anon: The K, the active solicitation of American business, and the money involved was too much for the US [government] to ignore. It wasn’t K. It was the combination of everything. Cheminova sold a ton of K and they never had executives indicted. Ttokkyo packaged everything really nicely for resale in America and that did them in. At one point they sold a 50 ml bottle that was cheap as balls, but they discontinued it because the fact is, you can’t fit one of those into your pocket and bring it into the club. They were all about making money off of Americans. Sure, some of us made a lot of money (some made a LOT of money) selling within Mexico itself as well. The real cash was with the gringos.

Anthony Roberts: So if you get indicted…

Anon: I spoke to this a bit already, but in summation, if you get indicted, you will go to jail. The Feds have a 98 percent conviction rate. They don’t lose. And if you go to jail, you will never be the same. You can’t spend drug money on a house without breaking a million other laws. You can’t beat the government. Now that they have the Patriot Act, they can do whatever they want. Overseas servers don’t mean shit. You think Zimbabwe won’t give the DEA the keys to a server locked in some office somewhere? You think China won’t help out? You think the Chinese or French government isn’t as interested in getting some of this money as the US government is? Fuck privacy. There is none. I have personally seen PGP decoded that should not have been able to be decoded. All the boards have DEA on them. A few that I know of are controlled by the DEA. One time, the DEA called this one board a “branch office” in front of me, because they had so many agents on it..

Anthony Roberts: So I take it you wouldn’t recommend being a steroid dealer as a career choice, huh?

Anon: If you want to sell steroids then you have to be a rinky dink $3000 a week guy. That isn’t worth it to me, personally. I can make that kind of money with a job. If you want to sell roids and make real money, you are playing with the US government now, and they make the rules as they go. You’ve seen what they do the POWs. You’ve seen what they do to suspected terrorists. You don’t get a phone call when you go to jail and they don’t have to let you talk to a lawyer until you go to court. You disappear. They own your ass. You have no rights and you cannot hope to win at trial. You are going to plead guilty. You are going to lose.

The Federal Justice system is totally different than the state system. The state I live in could never have touched me. I knew that. They knew that. It didn’t matter. Along came the Feds with heresy and circumstantial evidence (admissible in Federal court) and they indicted me based on some shit that wouldn’t have held up in state court for a second. I was fucked from day one and there is no way around it. Once the Feds decide that you are interesting because either you are doing something noteworthy or you know someone who is doing someone noteworthy, you are on their radar. You might do a deal and get pulled over afterwards. They take your license, look at it, and let you go. A year later they kick down your door. They have seven years to come for you. Sometimes, they wait seven years. They took your license to prove that it was you in 1998 who was in Jimmy’s house. In 2004, they come and get you because with your testimony, they can finally get Jimmy. If you don’t testify, your wife is going to jail for 36 months and youre going for 120. You haven’t even talked to Jimmy in 2 years. You don’t even remember being pulled over. You haven’t even been selling drugs for 18 months.

Bye bye. They don’t give a fuck. Just like you gotta eat, so do they.

Anthony Roberts: So how was your time in the can?

Anon: Jail sucks. It’s no fun. I was in a pretty cushy place for a lot of my sentence, and it still sucked. Here’s a message to the guy(s) who rolled on me: Phil, I hope you know I know the truth now. You didn’t have to tell on me. You chose to. You weren’t looking at 15 years. You were looking at maybe one. You chose to fuck me and my family and everyone who I care and cares about me. You reached out to me and I told you there were no hard feelings. I didn’t know the truth. Now I do, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Be more ashamed knowing that I am kicking ass now, making $130k a year legally, driving a brand new BMW that cannot be seized because is all legal. Be most ashamed because you took me away from people who needed me. These were good people who never did anything wrong. These were people who knew nothing about anything criminal or illicit. You hurt them. Yes, I am to blame as well, but you didn’t need to hurt as many as you did. You are a pussy, and you will have to live with the knowledge that you are a cunt, in your heart, a cunt. At your core, there is a cunt. You too, Leroy.

Anthony Roberts: What do you think about the months following Ttokkyo’s fall?

Anon: During the months following Ttokkyo’s fall, I was kind of busy with legal stuff. I didn’t get to really observe anything happening. All I know is what I have heard since. The major people in Ttokkyo who were busted had a lot of good info on the scene down south. Its no wonder Gear Grinder happened. Its no wonder Mexico made Brovel go back to making low dose testosterone. Its no wonder all those people got arrested. Frankly, I’m surprised it wasn’t a bigger event. But bigger events are coming, because people are getting even more stupid. I thought I’d get out of jail and see people acting smarter, but its almost the reverse. Look at any of the boards and the fucking sponsorships! I can’t believe they have drug dealers as sponsors. All you guys who own boards sponsored by drug dealers or anyone who furthers a conspiracy, you’re liable to be indicted. If you own a server that a reasonable person would know illegal activity is taking place on, you are liable to be indicted to conspiracy towards that illegal activity. Its not enough to say “law enforcement cannot come in” – are you kidding me?

And Rick Collins is a joke. The dude doesn’t win cases. If you get a state charge, get a good local attorney. DO NOT fly in some fancy pants from another state. The judge will have a hard on for you. Steroids are an illegal drug like any other illegal drug, and you just need a good local lawyer. If you get a Fed charge, you are just as well off with a good appointed lawyer. Its going to be about your plea bargain, not trial strategy.
(From Anthony Roberts: I did not want to bash Rick here, but I agreed to let this go uncensored.)

Anthony Roberts: Do you see this Rise/Fall pattern happening again?

Anon: As I already said: yep. Its classic drug economics; one rises to fill a need and falls. Another comes along. The funny thing is that the stupidity also repeats itself. Like the aforementioned sponsorships on the boards and the powder distributors and the GenSci’s of the world, this shit doesn’t stop. Its endless. Greed will never die, I guess.

Anthony Roberts: Do you think the Mexican scene is still alive?

Anon: It’s limping along. There are UG labs down there with the advantage of being able to operate a little more freely and try to present themselves as legit. People always said Mexican gear was bathtub brew. Well, they are getting what they wanted. There are a couple companies down there now making things that look like they are from someplace else and might even have a corresponding business entity someplace else, but are really being made my Jose and Juan Carlos in the back of a tortilla factory.

Brovel and Tornel are still around, but they are behaving themselves now.

It’s not the place it was. You can still get everything down there that you could want, but in jail they say that the inmates always ruin everything for the inmates. In the steroid world, the industry always ruins everything for the industry.

Anthony Roberts: Would you do it over, knowing what you know now?

Anon: Beautiful, classic question here, Anthony.

Knowing what I know now, no. I would not. I wasted six or so years of my life. I got to know a lot about steroids. So what? What good is that unless you’re selling steroids? So I got to drive fancy cars and be with all sorts of women and spend $10k a day. I got to ride in helicopters and play Scarface.

Yay. Now what? I was making money just to make money. I couldn’t spend it all.

I’m glad I know what I now know, and I am thankful that I didn’t get killed or kill anyone, and I am glad that I recognize the shame in humankind, and I am very thankful that I know what is important in life. Most of all, I am ashamed that I did not know it before.

My life and lifestyle was killing me. This time in jail and being faced with legal trouble has given me a new lease on life, and I have a life that I love dearly. I would die or kill for the life that I have now. It’s quite a switch.

But would I ever put the people I love through this again? No. I am proud that there is not one person out there, criminal or upstanding citizen, who will say anything bad about me. I am a really good friend to have and I was there for buddies who got locked up when nobody was there for me. But still, I can never forgive myself for what I did. I have no moral problems with myself for selling drugs. I have major problems with myself for smothering my lucidity of thought.

I would rather die than have my bumbling hand cause pain to people I love again.

Really, I hold no grudges against anyone who told on me. For one, I don’t have the energy and don’t want to spend my time thinking about you. For two, you know who you are. You know what you did. So does whatever God you pray to. And if you don’t pray to a God, and even if your God sides with you, you will have a little boy one day of your own. You might already. He will look up at you and you’ll be able to tell how much he loves you, admires you, thinks the world of you.

And inside, you will know what a cunt you are and how unworthy you are of his admiration.

That is enough for me. I am sorry that you have to live that way for the rest of your life, until the day you die, unable to take back your cowardice and sloth.

I have to go back to work now. Please, everyone, be safe. I fully support your right to manipulate your body in any way you choose and I fully recognize that there is a demand for drug dealers. If you choose to be one, please do your research first. Just like we all told newbies on the boards to go do a little reading first, I’m telling you that if you decide to go into the drug business, do your due diligence.

And then look at your family and ask yourself if it is worth losing them for. I know I would rather have my Father back than ten million dollars.

And then, when you do it anyhow and get your empty vials and sterile oil or make that 1000 amp purchase that is being sent to the abandoned house down the street, make sure you bury as much money as you spend, because you’ll need it when you get out.

I am tired now. I hope someone somewhere got something good from this.

Peace.

Anthony Roberts: Thank you for your time and giving us all the benefit of your experience.

Originally published on iSteroids. Reprinted with permission.