Business in Counterfeit Steroids Booms as Demand for Drug Grows

Fake steroids have become a booming offshoot of the steroid business, due largely to the ignorance and naivete of teen-age users, according to police and health officials.

The quality of steroids on the black market, especially supplies coming from Mexico, has become a big issue, with salt and sugar showing up in pills. In one case, a young buyer had no idea what he was getting when he purchased a bottle of “steroids.”

Keith Shackleford, 26, a former college football player who is a private investigator in Huntington Beach, recalled that he has a friend who got what he thought were steroids in pill form. The pills came from Mexico with a label written in Spanish.

“He didn’t speak Spanish. He just took the guy’s word who sold him the stuff that they were steroids,” Shackleford said.

The friend used the pills and noticed that he was retaining a lot of water. Finally, he took the bottle to a friend who spoke Spanish and had him translate.

“The guy had been taking birth-control pills,” Shackleford said. “He got off the stuff but think about what could have happened if the pills had been something deadly. A lot of guys will take another guy’s word as gospel just because the guy is big and buffed. They figure he knows what he’s talking about.”