Ex-Olympian Arrested in Steroid Crackdown

Federal prosecutors said Thursday they had shattered an international drug ring--headed by a one-time Olympic track medalist--that claimed to control 70% of the $100-million U.S. black market in anabolic steroids, the bulk-producing drugs favored by many amateur, professional and weekend athletes.

A 110-count federal grand jury indictment, unsealed Thursday in San Diego, said the ring manufactured a wide variety of steroids--some of them impure or mislabeled--at a legal drug plant in Tijuana, smuggled them across the U.S. border at San Ysidro, and used a nationwide distribution network to sell the drugs, occasionally employing strong-arm tactics and threats to collect payment from its customers.

Among the suspects arrested Thursday by federal agents was Patrick Jacobs, 31, associate strength coach at the University of Miami (Fla.), who was named in the indictment as a distributor for the alleged drug ring. University officials said Jacobs had been suspended and announced that a Miami law firm had been hired to conduct an investigation of steroid use by the school’s athletes.

U.S. Atty. Peter K. Nunez said the drug network’s mastermind was David Jenkins, 35, of Carlsbad, a member of Britain’s silver medal-winning 1,600-meter relay team in the 1972 Munich Olympics. The indictment alleges that Jenkins conspired with Mexican drug producer Juan Javier Macklis to manufacture millions of dollars worth of steroids at Macklis’ plant in Tijuana.

Also indicted was Daniel Duchaine, 34, of Benicia, author of the “Underground Steroid Handbook for Men and Women,” a guide to unauthorized steroid use widely circulated among athletes.

Serious Side Effects

Nunez said U.S. authorities had “no reason to doubt” the smugglers’ claims about the extent of their sales empire. In the last six months, of some 100 people arrested at California border crossings entering the U.S. with illegal steroids, “100%” carried steroids manufactured at Macklis’ Laboratorios Milano de Mexico, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Phillip L.B. Halpern, who directed the investigation.

Anabolic steroids are legally available in the U.S. only for treatment of a handful of conditions, including breast cancer and some complications of kidney failure. The FDA has strictly limited their legal uses because of serious, documented side effects, including liver and prostate cancer, sterility, birth defects, behavioral changes and increased risk of heart disease.

Investigators said the demand in the U.S. for illegal steroids has swelled in conjunction with two phenomenons: a crackdown by the Food and Drug Administration on the domestic manufacture of the drugs, and the growing demand for steroids among not only athletes in organized competition, but among average weekend athletes seeking to increase their body size and strength.

“The market at one time was exclusively confined to body-builders and football players,” Halpern said at a press conference announcing the indictment.

“Now these steroids have been found in high schools, they’ve been found in colleges, and they’ve been found in gyms across the country. It’s not just professional athletes. But it’s just the regular, everyday fellow who goes to the gyms to work out.”

Jenkins, a British subject, was arrested April 28 and is being held without bail at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego as a possible flight risk, according to his attorney, Robert Grimes.

At least a dozen of the 34 defendants named in the indictment--16 of whom are Californians and six from Tijuana--had been arrested as of midday Thursday, Halpern said, with suspects jailed by federal authorities in Houston and Ventura, as well as San Diego and Miami.

“We have broken the distribution network,” he said.

University of Miami officials said they were confident that steroid abuse was not “prevalent” among the school’s athletes, despite Jacobs’ arrest.

“I do not think he could have been supplying them to our athletes in excessive amounts,” Athletic Director Sam Jankovich said in a telephone interview. “If there was a very small percentage, I don’t think we can rule that out right now.”

Few Positive Tests in ’86

Of the 96 tests for steroid use conducted on members of the Hurricane football team last season, only one or two indicated drug use, Jankovich said. Two players were prevented from traveling with the team to the Jan. 2 Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Ariz., where Miami lost to Pennsylvania State University in a game to determine the national collegiate football champion. University of Miami officials declined to say at the time whether the players were left behind because they failed National Collegiate Athletic Assn. drug tests.

Jacobs, who worked at a Phoenix fitness center before joining the Miami athletic department in September, 1984, worked part-time with the football team, but most of his duties related to other sports, Jankovich said.

Though distribution of steroids by coaches is grounds for discipline under NCAA rules, the collegiate sports governing body probably will not immediately instigate an investigation of Jacobs’ conduct or the University of Miami sports program, said Butch Worley, an enforcement official at NCAA headquarters in Shawnee, Kan.