Steroid Ring Broken; Ex-Olympian Held

Federal prosecutors said Thursday that they had shattered an international drug network, 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 and professional athletes.

A 110-count federal grand jury indictment, unsealed Thursday, 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 system, occasionally employing strong-arm tactics and threats to collect payments.

Among the suspects arrested Thursday by federal agents was Patrick Jacobs, 31, associate strength coach at the University of Miami in Florida, who was named in the indictment as a distributor for the alleged drug ring. University officials said Jacobs, who worked with the Hurricanes football team and other athletes, 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.

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 United States 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.

Steroids are legally available in the United States only by prescription 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 United States for illegal steroids has swelled in conjunction with two phenomena: 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 had been arrested as of midday Thursday, according to Halpern. Suspects were jailed by federal authorities in Los Angeles, Phoenix, St. Paul, Houston and Ventura, as well as San Diego and Miami. Sixteen of those indicted were from California and six were from Tijuana.

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

“We have broken the distribution network,” Halpern said Thursday.

Abuse Not ‘Prevalent’

University of Miami officials said they are 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.”

Of the 96 tests for steroid use conducted on members of the Hurricanes football team last season, only one or two indicated drug use, Jankovich said.

Two players did not travel with the team to the Jan. 2 Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Ariz., where Miami, ranked No. 1 in the nation through most of the season, lost the national championship football game to Penn State, but university officials would not 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.

Grounds for Discipline

Although 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, according to Butch Worley, an enforcement official at NCAA headquarters in Shawnee, Kan.