FDA and DEA were closing in on Canadian underground lab producing anabolic steroids

[steroidbot]

US drug agencies were closing in on steroid lab
TheChronicleHerald.ca, Canada
A special agent with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration testified Tuesday a Bridgewater man ran a "very high-level" underground Internet steroid lab out of his home.

"I was familiar with Illusion Laboratories and had considered targeting the lab," Alex Davis testified in Bridgewater provincial court Tuesday at the sentencing hearing of Kevin Wayne Tanner. But when he learned that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was already targeting Illusion, "I backed off and didn’t pursue it any further," he said. [...]

As a special agent with the FDA’s criminal investigations branch, Mr. Davis has been involved in about 50 investigations involving anabolic steroids. He said Mr. Tanner had customers in 31 states.

Looking at photographs taken inside Mr. Tanner’s house, Mr. Davis said what he saw was "all very indicative of an underground steroid lab," including raw chemicals, packaging and labelling material and equipment to make the steroids in liquid and pill form.

He said there are certain dangers inherent in making steroids in a home lab with raw materials imported from China. He said the imported chemicals can be mislabelled or mixed up or may contain heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, tin and mercury, and a home lab likely isn’t sterile.

He said Mr. Tanner did take some steps to ensure the quality of the drugs he was making by using products to kill bacteria and by using a filter that would remove some impurities, but he said the filter would not remove the heavy metals, and the environment was not sterile ...


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