2 Indicted in Artificial Growth Hormone Sales

A Sacramento-area bodybuilder and a Carmel man have been charged with distributing a genetically engineered human growth hormone, a drug increasingly sought by top athletes as a non-detectable substitute for anabolic steroids.

William E. Cambra Jr., 31, of Carmichael and James V. Sorrano, 29, of Carmel were named in the 12-count indictment filed Wednesday in San Diego federal court. The indictment also included charges of conspiring to sell the synthetic hormone, distributing steroids and distributing counterfeit steroids.

The charges were the first by federal prosecutors involving the distribution of the synthetic hormone, an expensive drug prescribed only for children with growth deficiencies but in increasing demand among world-class athletes seeking to pass drug tests, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Phillip L. B. Halpern of San Diego.

The indictment was unsealed after the arrest of Cambra Wednesday morning in Carmichael, a Sacramento suburb. Known as a national-class bodybuilder and owner of a Carmichael gym, Cambra was being held pending a bail hearing today in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, Halpern said. Police were searching for Sorrano, he said.

If convicted, both face up to 38 years in prison and $3 million in fines. Cambra ran a nationwide network that distributed large amounts of the synthetic hormone and bogus anabolic steroids, the indictment alleges.

The hormone substitute costs between $600 and $1,200 per dose on the black market, Halpern said.

“Because of that it’s not used by every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to use steroids,” he said. “Only top-level athletes, be they bodybuilders, track and field, etcetera, would want to use human growth hormone.”

The hormone is so hard to detect under the drug tests currently given to athletes, Halpern said, that “if you took it in the last Olympics, it would not have been caught.”

The hormone is the compound Olympic gold medalist Florence Griffith Joyner recently was accused of taking. Sprinter Darrell Robinson told the West German magazine Stern that he sold Griffith Joyner 10 cubic centimeters of the hormone for $2,000 in 1988. Griffith Joyner, who retired from competition in February, denies the accusation.

Because the risk of being caught using the growth hormone is so low, an “expanding” segment of the $200-million to $400-million black market in steroids is turning to the hormone, according to Halpern, who is acknowledged as the nation’s leading prosecutor of illegal steroid sales.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows only two American firms to make the compound, Genentech Inc. of South San Francisco, which calls the drug Humatrope, and Eli Lilly Co. of Indianapolis, which calls it Protropin. Sold at retail for $450 per dose, Halpern said, it is prescribed for children whose pituitary glands do not naturally secrete enough growth hormone.

It aids athletes, Halpern said, because it produces effects similar to steroids, which help the body build and repair tissue, even under tremendous workout stress. To use the synthetic hormone, two refrigerated substances, one crystalline and one liquid, must be mixed and then injected, Halpern said.

Cambra and Sorrano were charged in connection with the Sept. 23, 1988, sale to undercover agents of $100,000 worth of the Lilly hormone, Halpern said. Worth $250,000 to $500,000 on the black market, the hormone had been trucked down from Northern California to the buy site, a motel in El Centro in Imperial County, Halpern said.

It was not known how much, if any, of the hormone substitute allegedly distributed by Cambra and Sorrano actually was sold to athletes.