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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
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0 3 - 0 7 - 2 0 0 5 Agents probing hormone shipment
400 vials seized
By Alicia Caldwell and Bill Briggs
Agents with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Postal Inspection Service are investigating a shipment of human growth hormone worth up to $400,000 to the home of a Denver substance-abuse counselor, records show. Authorities in March seized 400 vials of Chinese hGH and are
Sisco denies any wrongdoing and said she was an intermediary for a legitimate shipment. No charges have been brought as a result of the raid. While the national debate on performance-enhancing drugs swirls around sports superstars, federal agents are waging a local battle away from the limelight. They're intercepting hGH doses meant for everyday people who are hoping to look younger and leaner. It's all part of a surging anti-aging phenomenon in which hGH is king. Law enforcement officials step in when hGH is illegally pitched as a youth elixir. HGH can be legally prescribed only under narrow circumstances, including the treatment of AIDS wasting disease. HGH also is obtained illegally by some athletes seeking to build muscle and cut fat. "I can't comment on ongoing investigations, but I can state that there is a problem in general," said Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Colorado. "The illegal trafficking of human growth hormones remains a concern of the Justice Department." The investigation is in its infancy, said federal law enforcement sources who still are threading together the intended use and eventual buyers for the 400 vials. But federal agents suspect Sisco's house was "being used as a location to receive, store and distribute unapproved new drugs, misbranded drugs, and/or human growth hormone illegally introduced into the United States," according to a search- warrant affidavit filed by U.S. Food and Drug Administration special agent Russell Hermann. Agents also are exploring possible ties between the March shipment and Albert Celio, a now-disbarred doctor who supplied steroids and hGH to a local fitness club, according to federal court records. The operation, which spanned 1999 and 2000, was described in federal records at the time as being the largest steroid-dealing ring in Denver. Investigative documents in that case list sales to a variety of customers, including Denver police officers. Celio was sentenced Friday to 27 months in federal prison for prescription fraud - one of four cohorts convicted on various charges. Celio declined to be interviewed for this story. Now, federal investigators are probing the association between Celio and Sisco. A search-warrant affidavit said Celio co- owned a home with Sisco in 2001. And during the March 18 raid on Sisco's house, agents found a piece of mail addressed to him. Sisco acknowledges once employing Celio at her clinic, Excel Treatment Program. In 2002, a federal prosecutor called his work at Excel "highly inappropriate" given the drug charges he faced. Sisco said she fired him after learning about the charges. "We don't even want to be associated with him," Sisco said in an interview. "We treat people to not be affiliated with substance rather than be affiliated with it." The hGH investigation began March 11 when customs and border protection officers working at the San Francisco international mail facility intercepted two packages from Hefei, China. The parcels, labeled as mineral samples, were bound for Sisco's home in Aurora and addressed to Teresa Denney, an osteopath who works in Hawaii. Twenty-three minutes after Sisco accepted the shipment, agents raided her home and seized the vials. On the street, one vial of hGH can sell for as much as $1,000, police say. At least seven packages originating from overseas had been delivered to Sisco's home in the six months prior to the raid, a postal employee told federal authorities. Only 1 percent to 3 percent of inbound foreign packages are physically examined by customs and border agents, federal authorities say. The Internet is littered with websites pushing hGH as the new wonder drug for an over-40 crowd seeking a lean, cut physique with little dieting or exercise. Some claim human growth hormone will restore lost hair or banish gray hair, enhance the immune system and even boost sexual performance. Denney's Honolulu-based clinic offers growth hormone through its website, HGHPharm.com, which compares the drug to a "fountain of youth" and promises results in "as early as one week." Denney did not return three phone messages left at her clinic in Honolulu. When federal agents searched Sisco's house in March, they sought any information linking Denney, Sisco, Celio and Keith Skinner, a Hawaii man who once was married to Sisco and had business ties with Celio, court records show. Skinner's truck, which contained two other boxes from Hefei, China, plus an array of pills and capsules, was parked in Sisco's driveway on the morning of the search. In an interview, Sisco said the hGH was ordered from China by Denney, a friend, for use in anti- aging treatments on Denney's patients on "the East Coast." Sisco said her role was to keep the hGH chilled before repackaging it and sending the drug east. "That was legitimate, with that package. They (the federal agents) just didn't know what it was for," said Sisco, also a licensed chiropractor. Skinner, a former Colorado chiropractor, could not be reached for comment. Last month, a Denver District Court judge entered a $2.3 million judgment in a medical malpractice case against a business with which Skinner was affiliated, records show. Front Range Management Group, which was doing business as Cellular Medicine Institute, "deceptively represented" Skinner as a licensed physician, according to a judge's order awarding damages. 0 3 - 0 7 - 2 0 0 5 Numerous figures linked to steroid ring had ties to Denver gym
By Bill Briggs and Alicia Caldwell
His wife was dying. Nothing could stop the cancer. His own body, racked by anxiety and depression, was withering too, down more than 40 pounds. That's when Phil Haberman got a sales pitch from his personal trainer - a question, he says five years later, that changed his life and his body. "Have you ever thought about taking steroids?" Tim Murphy asked Haberman one day at Focus Gyms. "I've got a doctor. He happens to be one of my clients. He's helped out people like you." Haberman had seen the old photos of Murphy, back when when his arms weren't rippled and ridged like a Rocky Mountain relief map. The first vial would cost only $175, and no prescription was needed, he was told. Haberman was sold. In a back room at Focus, he learned how to pierce his thigh with a syringe. He learned how to inject Murphy's shoulder. He learned that users often drove to Mexico to smuggle home cloudy steroids that sometimes left angry sores. He learned that Murphy's doctor pal was providing a rare commodity. "It was quality stuff," said Haberman, a car salesman then, a U.S. Army soldier today. His appetite surged. His spirit healed. His body regained 42 pounds of muscle, without a single side effect. His buddies at the car lot nicknamed him "our resident juicehead." The clear fluid in Haberman's syringe was testosterone cypionate, also known as "cyp." Haberman never met the doctor, Albert Celio. He only heard the name mumbled at the gym. The "cyp" came from Pencol Medisave, a Cherry Creek pharmacy where in 1999 and 2000 Celio obtained 8,890 testosterone tablets and 1,730 milliliters of liquid testosterone, according to federal investigative records. The doses, Celio claimed, would treat patients with male menopause. But the names he scrawled on his prescription pad came from Murphy's gym roster. And most of those men never got the drugs. Murphy, a competitive bodybuilder, said he never sold steroids or human growth hormone for profit. He bought the drugs for his own use or to share with friends on the bodybuilding circuit, he said. Celio, who ran medical clinics in Denver and Westminster, was a common sight at Murphy's gym. A few years earlier, Celio had asked Murphy to buff him up. By 2000, Celio would stroll into the gym hugging a brown paper bag jingling with vials of testosterone, recalls former Focus trainer Tim Kaufman. Murphy kept growth hormone and other muscle-boosting drugs in a gym refrigerator, Kaufman said. He gave clients their injections in a massage room, documenting those doses in their training logs. According to federal investigative records and interviews with ex-trainers, some buyers were office workers in their 30s who wanted magazine-cover bodies, some were strippers who wanted to get lean, and some were Denver police officers looking to "stay on top." In late 2000, Denver police officers Jeff Hausner and Alex Golston came to the gym to see trainer X, according to an FBI document produced during the government's probe of Murphy. They had met X. at a nightclub where the officers worked off-duty security jobs and X. moonlighted as a bouncer, Hausner said. The officers asked about steroids, the FBI document says. X. told U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents that he sold three bottles of testosterone and 21 bottles of hGH to Hausner, Golston and Denver police Sgt. Tom Lahey, the FBI document says. X. said he made the officers an injection schedule and collected $2,000 from Golston, according to the document. Golston, an officer in the department's District 3 station, did not return a phone message. Hausner and Lahey deny ever buying or using steroids or hGH. "That name (X) doesn't sound familiar," Lahey said. "It's not ringing a bell." Lahey, who works in the department's airport division, was charged and later cleared in a separate steroids case in 2003. Investigators from the South Metro Drug Task Force raided Lahey's home that January after he received a package of what police believed was testosterone. The charges were dropped when an Arapahoe County judge ruled the evidence was too weak to connect the shipment to Lahey. While Lahey doesn't remember X, Hausner does. He acknowledges having gone to Focus Gyms, where he said he bought protein and other legal supplements. "I don't buy drugs that are illegal," said Hausner, a sergeant in the District 6 substation. "I don't take drugs that are illegal. I don't even take Advil very much." X declined to comment. Murphy today accuses his former trainer of making up a story to avoid prosecution. On a shelf high above the gym floor, Murphy keeps a sheaf of paper - the narrative from X's 2001 interview with the DEA. To Murphy, that copy can save his reputation and prove he didn't rat out friends. The federal agents, Murphy says, blew everything out of proportion. After investing two years in their probe, "they needed a scapegoat," he said. "They made me their target." Those same agents also pawed through Murphy's trash in late 2000, finding syringes, empty bottles of steroids and hGH, and an empty bottle of Nolvadex - a breast-cancer drug taken by male steroid users to keep them from growing breasts. Murphy was convicted of conspiracy to dispense and distribute controlled substances. He received probation. He says he now runs a clean place. Today, the speakers in Focus Gyms pulse with the staccato beat of a dance club. The lights are bright. The mirrors are spotless. The people are pretty. His old gym, tucked between a beauty salon and the Forever Lounge on Leetsdale Drive, is closed. Murphy now works with clients in an upscale building on a hill overlooking Glendale. His staff includes the reigning Mr. Colorado and a man who once trained the Indianapolis Colts cheerleaders. Five years after the feds first nosed around his place, Murphy has moved 1 mile up the road. But as he puts his copy of the FBI document back in its hiding place, he still seems like a man trying to distance himself from the past. |
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