Daniel McGlone was sentenced to two years in prison for advertising, marketing and promoting American Pharmaceutical Group (APG) as a source for anabolic steroids and human growth hormone in bodybuilding magazines and through the internet website PrescriptionProtocol.com. Daniel McGlone aka American Pharmaceutical Group paid $18,150 to American Media Inc. (AMI) for magazine advertisements over about an 18-month period; AMI publishes the bodybuilding magazines FLEX Magazine, Muscle & Fitness and Men’s Fitness. AMG also paid for $1,800 for advertisements in the bodybuilding magazine Planet Muscle for a couple of months.
The American Pharmaceutical Group made $860,810 over a twenty-eight month period in proceeds from anabolic steroid and HGH sales to individual customers and referral bonuses from compounding pharmacies such as Signature Pharmacy. Customers responding to ads in bodybuilding magazines and on the internet were prescribed various anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Specific drugs included testosterone, testosterone cypionate, testosterone propionate, testosterone enanthate, stanozolol, nandrolone decanoate, and somatropin (“Steroid seller given two-year term,” January 17).
You are a drug dealer, U.S. District Judge William E. Smith said. To call it something else is just to gloss it over. […]
Prosecutors say McGlone made more than $860,000 from steroid and HGH sales arranged from 2003 to 2006 through American Pharmaceutical Group, a business he operated from his New Brunswick, N.J., home.
Under the scheme, he would solicit prescriptions from doctors, including two sentenced in 2007 for their roles. One, Ana Maria Santi, of Queens, N.Y., had prescribed 84,000 doses of steroids and HGH to 400 customers of pharmaceutical sales companies, including McGlone’s, prosecutors said. McGlone would then forward those prescriptions to compounding pharmacies, which would deliver the drugs to customers throughout the country, including Rhode Island.
Daniel McGlone was the owner and sole employee of American Pharmaceutical Group. McGlone managed the lucrative operation from his apartment where he avoided hands-on involvement with anabolic steroids or HGH. McGlone advised customers on steroid stacks and protocols; he then paid three physicians – indicted and unindicted co-conspirators Ana Maria Santi, M.D., Victor Mariani M.D., and Claire Godfrey, M.D. – to write prescriptions for the various performance enhancing drugs and submit them to large compounding pharmacies such as Signature Pharmacy.
Dr. Santi and Dr. Mariani were indicted as co-conspirators with Daniel McGlone. Both physicians pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison in 2007 (“Physician, former physician are sentenced for fraudulently prescribing steroids & human growth hormone,” November 2, 2007).
At the plea hearings, Assistant U.S. Attorney Adi Goldstein said the government could prove that Santi and Mariani engaged in a conspiracy with Daniel McGlone, who operated American Pharmaceutical Group (APG) out of his home in North New Brunswick, New Jersey. At McGlone’s request, Santi and Mariani fraudulently wrote prescriptions for steroids and hGH. McGlone then had the prescriptions filled at compounding pharmacies and shipped to the end users, who had ordered the drugs from McGlone over the Internet or through ads in body-building magazines (“Physician, former physician are sentenced for fraudulently prescribing steroids & human growth hormone,” November 2, 2007).
Neither Santi, whose license to practice medicine had been revoked in New York in 1999, nor Mariani, who was a licensed physician during the conspiracy, ever examined or even spoke to the end users for whom they wrote prescriptions.
Santi, operating in Queens, New York, wrote the prescriptions in the name of another doctor, who at the time was retired and living in a nursing home in California, and who has since died. Santi admitted writing an average of 100 prescriptions a month for APG. She admitted writing prescriptions for nearly 400 APG customers, and also admitted writing prescriptions for steroids and hGH for three other companies. McGlone paid her $25 per prescription.
Mariani maintained a practice in Queens and Manhattan. He admitted writing an average of 100 prescriptions a month at McGlone’s request, and wrote prescriptions for 274 of APG’s customers. He also wrote prescriptions for at least one other company.
Claire Godfrey, M.D., FOX New medical correspondent and former Mrs. Florida beauty pageant contestant, was not indicted in the American Pharmaceutical Group conspiracy. But Dr. Godfrey pleaded guilty to charges in the Albany County District Attorney David Soares’ Operation Which Doctor steroid investigation involving Signature Pharmacy. Godfrey was also identified as the physician who prescribed anabolic steroids to IFBB pro bodybuilder Victor Martinez (“Fox News doc cops ‘roid plea,” July 25, 2007).
Godfrey wrote illegal prescriptions worth more than $1.3 million for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs last year for scores of patients – including two active wrestlers and bodybuilder Victor Martinez – without examining them, New York State Department of Health investigator Mark Haskins told the Daily News.
The Albany County District Attorney’s Office considered Claire Godfrey a star witness should the case against Signature Pharmacy go to trial. Dr. Godfrey was on the advisory board of the Institute of Nutritional Medicine and Cardiovascular Research, along with Naomi Loomis, which was located at the Signature Pharmacy headquarters. Godfrey started her own longevity clinic called Ageless (“Longwood doctor key to steroid case,” July 25, 2007).
“She is the most important one of the doctors in this case,” said Assistant District Attorney Christopher Baynes. “She’s familiar with [Signature’s] principals and the inner workings of the pharmacy.” […]
She told prosecutors that Signatures referred online clinics — which needed doctors to sign prescriptions — to her. Godfrey said Calvert and Stan Loomis helped her set up a pay structure, including charging $50 a script. She learned later that Signature charged clinics about $10,000 to connect them to a doctor, Baynes said.
Since 2006, Godfrey wrote prescriptions for at least five clinics, including ones in Texas and New Jersey, the prosecutor said.
A.J. Peterson told Albany County investigators that Oasis Rejuvenation paid Signature Pharmacy $10,000 for access to Claire Godfrey who would write prescriptions for anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (“Signature Pharmacy pimping in female doctors,” March 30, 2007).
“Peterson blows the lid off the fact that Signature not only knew what the doctors were doing, but actually were providing doctors for these clinics,” Baynes said outside court. In exchange for a deal that will keep him out of prison, Peterson has agreed to cooperate with investigators. He had faced a maximum potential penalty of 1 /3 to 4 years in prison for his guilty plea to a felony count of criminal diversion of a prescription medication. […]
The Times Union learned this week that an employee of another wellness center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., also told investigators he’d paid an official at Signature Pharmacy $10,000 in cash for access to a doctor willing to approve pre-written prescriptions for steroids. The employee has not been charged with a crime and is cooperating with authorities, his attorney told the newspaper.
Claire Godfrey also wrote prescriptions for Cellular Nucleonic Advantage clinic in Texas.
About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
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