[DatBTrue] At the Heart of a Vast Doping Network, an Alias

[Michael Scally MD]

Investigators believe a man in Arizona was distributing performance-enhancing drugs on a global scale, yet no charges have been filed. His clientele included pro athletes.

On Aug. 25, 2015, a Swiss postal inspector reached into the river of 300,000 parcels that pour into that nation every day and, for a routine inspection, plucked out two packages arriving from Arizona. Inspectors unwrapped them and found serried rows of bottles.

The bottles were suspected of containing performance-enhancing drugs, so they were shipped to an antidoping laboratory for testing. Chemists discovered three synthetic compounds that are illicit gold for cheating athletes. One sped the healing of tendons and ligaments. Another helped build muscle mass. A third stimulated the body to burn fat.

The Swiss authorities notified the organization in the United States that investigates sports doping, the United States Anti-Doping Agency, and shared the return-address sticker. The packages were shipped by someone named Thomas Mann.

His name drew puzzled shrugs from Usada investigators. That name had never crossed their radar, and they could not find a home listing for someone with that name in their database in Arizona or anywhere else.

The name was then stored in the organization’s computer system and largely forgotten, until it resurfaced in a different context several months later, triggering an intense pursuit of Thomas Mann and an aggressive investigation of his enterprise that involved federal law enforcement as well as antidoping officials.

The existence of the investigation and its extraordinary findings have not been previously reported.

Investigators believe what they uncovered was a trafficker who sat at the center of one of the broadest sports doping networks in American history, with tendrils that extended to Europe and Asia. In one year, he shipped parcels containing performance-enhancing drugs to more than 8,000 people, they determined. His substance of choice was peptides, a newly popular (though banned) substance among athletes that is essentially a building block for protein.

...

 

[Eman]

Wowza.

At the Heart of a Vast Doping Network, an Alias

 

[Millard]

The bad news for vendors of peptides and their customers:

The fact that NYTimes investigative journalists have reported the story along with news that USADA has been pressuring the feds to do something.

The good news for vendors of peptides and their customers:

For Drug Enforcement Administration officials, the problem lies with the weak wording of the laws that currently govern peptides.

'“If I catch you with heroin, it’s a controlled substance and illegal — that’s easy,” said Douglas W. Coleman, the special agent in charge of the D.E.A.’s Phoenix Division. “If I find human growth hormone, I have to build a case to show that it’s significantly outside what it can be prescribed for.

“Peptides are more difficult still. There’s really no legal foothold.”

The F.D.A. holds clearer regulatory authority; its officials could write tougher regulatory language and crack down on peptides and growth hormone. But agency investigators have paid scant attention to this black market.

[...]

Seeking a more detailed explanation, I called a former top F.D.A. official. He spoke on condition of anonymity, as he remains involved with these issues in the private sector. He described the F.D.A.’s stance as defensible. It has a small staff of about 200 agents, and they focus on plagues like tainted and counterfeit drugs, which endanger thousands of unsuspecting customers. The societal impact of peptides and growth hormone is far less severe, clearly.
The former official described the world of illicit peptide and hormones as caveat emptor — buyer beware. “If rich patients and athletes are going to anti-aging clinics or the web in search of unregistered drugs, they know the risk,” he said.

The decision to downgrade prosecutions has all but decriminalized the mass distribution and use of powerful and untested drugs for athletes.

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