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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
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3 0 - 1 0 - 2 0 0 7 A drug kingpin? 'Not in a million years'
How father of 2 ended up in international sting is a mystery
By CLAUDIA ROWE
ABERDEEN -- Unathletic as a child, undistinguished as a student and seemingly unambitious in later years, Ray Ross' life trajectory to this point hardly suggests that of a drug kingpin.
He lives in a modest, 1 1/2-story home sitting just off the main highway that cuts through this lonely, hard-edged town, and few of those who attended high school with Ross even remember his name.
But federal investigators have portrayed the 30-year-old father of two as a West Coast linchpin in a national steroid-distribution ring, claming that he pressed thousands of pills in his backyard garage, known as Samar Lab, and helped net more than $1 million for himself and three co-conspirators. Authorities have charged him with conspiracy to import and distribute anabolic steroids and conspiracy to launder
"I'd never have guessed in a million years that Ray would be involved in something like this. If you saw him on the street, you would not think of him as somebody doing illegal stuff," said Dale Revel, who briefly put Ross up in his home during the young man's teenage years. "I just saw him at Costco a few weeks ago, pushing a friggin' baby stroller. He sure didn't look like somebody doing drugs."
Indeed, friends described Ross as a devoted father -- someone more likely to call old friends for help with his eighth-grade stepdaughter's math homework than to run part of an international drug scheme. Impaired by a back injury a few years ago and no longer able to do much heavy labor, he had turned into something of a househusband, they said.
On the Internet, however, bodybuilders saw him as a godsend, extolling the quality and price of goods coming out of his lab.
"Have heard it is new, but it is supposed to be top of the line," said a poster to the bulletin board at Intense-training.com. "He presses all of his pills."
"It's good! The pills are really top notch!" another chimed in.
That would have been heady affirmation -- and could have brought stunningly lucrative remuneration -- to a man whose previous professional achievements topped out with dishwashing for Denny's and bartending in a recreational-vehicle park. In 2005, he filed for bankruptcy.
"Maybe he got tired of being broke," mused Revel, a retired longshoreman. "He's been getting jacked around by the state on disability -- said he wasn't getting hardly any money and his bills were coming due. I can see somebody that's broke wanting nice stuff for his kid and for himself. Down here, every time you turn around there's some mill going out of business and all you got are McDonald's jobs, and who's going to live on that?"
Most recently, Ross had busied himself with buying and renovating a tumbledown old bar on the outskirts of town, dreaming of the day he would reopen it as Mulligan's -- an Irish-style pub where patrons might ease into an armchair by the fire and sip microbrews.
"He wanted to do a nicer bar, because most of the bars in Aberdeen aren't very nice," said a childhood friend who was helping with the renovation. "He wanted more of an upper clientele -- not like these packed houses where there are fights all the time."
Still, onlookers in the know gawked at the figures. Records show that Ross and his wife, Lesley Warren, paid $170,000 for the business, assessed three years ago at $78,000. They also had recently bought a boat, though it sat unused outside of their vast, double-bay garage most of the time.
"They're real likable people, real nice neighbors," said Mark Johnson, who met Ross while painting homes nearby. "You heard they didn't have a pot to (bleep) in and then, boom! People were suspicious."
For money, the couple appeared to rely on Warren's job selling office machines. She told curious neighbors that her salary was near six figures, replete with bonuses.
If so, it would be unusual in Aberdeen, a once-thriving logging town that has more recently shriveled into a small, insular place where most people who make a comfortable living work outside the city.
For Ross, it seems to have been a place long marked by financial struggle and family difficulty. By the time he was 8, his mother had been charged with selling prescription drugs, his father had been convicted of drug possession and his parents had divorced.
Afterward, the tall, gangly boy bounced between Aberdeen and his father's home in Olympia, 40 minutes away. By age 16, he was back, attending Aberdeen High School, though he dropped out after a year. Then came a series of menial jobs and a few low-level brushes with the law -- underage drinking and leaving the scene after hitting another driver's car.
Friends say he and his mother, Inez Droke, rarely speak anymore. His sister, Miranda, works as a Vancouver police officer. She did not return a call seeking comment about her brother.
But Ross' father defended his son.
"His wife had a good job -- they didn't have money problems," John D. Ross said. "Yeah, he's worried. This isn't something not to worry about -- it's going to be costly -- but there's going to be a good story coming out about the way the DEA messed up." The greatest mystery is how Ross, a local boy of modest means, might have hooked up with an international steroid ring. Friends recall that he briefly lifted weights after high school but said he was generally non-athletic. Still, he added 35 pounds to his frame during that period. And those who know him best have no doubt about his resourcefulness.
"Ray is a smart guy," said a friend, who asked not to be identified. "If he wanted to do something, he'd figure out a way."
3 0 - 1 0 - 2 0 0 7 How an Aberdeen garage became key stop in global steroid pipeline
Suspects sold pills online and likely met on Web, agents say
By DAN RALEY
ABERDEEN -- The garage has gray siding, a metallic roof and three white doors of various sizes, and it's nicer than the house that shares the address at 2500 Aberdeen Ave. U.S. 101 South is a half-block away, Christian and Missionary Alliance Church just a few doors down, giving the neighborhood respectability.
People stop and take photos of the notorious building in the center of it all. A neighbor jokes about putting the place on his Web site.
This is where previously unattainable riches were created and an international steroid ring came to die, federal authorities say.
Shortly before sunrise Sept. 20, Drug Enforcement Administration agents from Seattle, accompanied by Aberdeen police and Grays Harbor County deputies, cordoned off surrounding streets, served arrest and search warrants on homeowners Ray and Lesley Ross and exposed their year-old garage for what investigators insist it really was -- an underground lab that turned Chinese ingredients into an American desire.
Eight miles away in Montesano, two of Ross' friends, Josh Springer, 25, and Jeff Thompson, 30, were pulled out of bed and arrested in simultaneous early-morning raids. Allegedly in possession of steroids and found to be destroying evidence, respectively, they were labeled as associates in a drug-manufacturing operation with direct ties to Las Vegas, Thailand and China.
These people put a Northwest face on Operation Raw Deal, a federal sting that swept the U.S. and nine other countries over four days, netting 56 labs, 124 arrests, $6.5 million in U.S. currency, 242 kilograms of raw steroid powder and 11.4 million dosage units of finished product. The latter amount was described as enough to supply 50,000 users for a year. And it's not over: Another wave of arrests is expected soon.
Ray Ross, 30, who has pleaded not guilty and is free on $25,000 bond, has been indicted in federal court in San Diego on charges of conspiracy to import and distribute steroids and money laundering. His wife and two friends have not been charged, but remain under investigation, the DEA said.
Aberdeen's role in illicit steroid activity with global implications proved astonishing to the 16,461 people who live here, but not to the investigators aggressively tracing it through the Internet to the unassuming coastal community, 109 miles southwest of Seattle.
"This is nowhere land, the end of the world," lamented Dale Revel, 59, a retired longshoreman whose son, Harley, was an Aberdeen High School contemporary of Ross'. "Aberdeen is a hick town. How do you meet some big drug guy who obviously isn't very smart?"
The DEA answer -- tying about 6 million American steroid users to a black-market Chinese drug industry worth about $67 billion -- is poetic and pointed.
"We swept the rats from our neighbor's barn, and we swept them into our own," said Dan Simmons, a San Diego-based DEA special agent.
In December 2005, another federal sting, Operation Gear Grinder, shut down eight Mexican labs supplying 80 percent of the illicit steroids entering the U.S., stuff that was manufactured largely from Chinese steroid powder.
A huge void for bodybuilding drugs was created. In response, underground labs were bankrolled across this country, quickly sprouting up from Aberdeen to East Rutherford, N.J.
Quality control was the biggest difference between the Mexican and American labs, and not how one might initially envision it. South of the border, the facilities actually met veterinary standards, using the latest in production equipment at fairly professional sites. In contrast, U.S. labs were amateurish and unsanitary, set up in basements, kitchens and garages.
"One thing we saw was how dirty and unsafe these labs were," said Rusty Payne, a DEA spokesman in Washington, D.C. "Drugs were stored in sinks and bathtubs. They were pretty nasty labs.
"The idea that people were putting this stuff into their bodies and didn't know where it came from and what it was is kind of scary."
Approaching the Chinese government after the homeland arrests, U.S. officials handed over evidence that 37 factories, businesses or sites in that country were engaged in illegal drug enterprise with this country, fueling the underground labs with steroid powder. With Beijing hosting the Olympic Games next summer, subtle pressure was applied by the Americans to curtail the connection. Whether that message was received remains to be seen.
Shaun Assael, the New York-based author of the recently released book "Steroid Nation" and a senior writer for ESPN the Magazine, visited China and freely bought steroids in order to write about the clandestine experience. There's almost no government interference in this industry, making the Asian country a natural hub. Steroids offered on the Internet are relabeled as something else when shipped to the U.S.
"It's cheaper to make it there," Assael said. "It's a controlled substance here, so if you have a factory, odds are you're going to get noticed. Frankly, it's just easier and less risky there."
Web sales surging Steroid powder is created from a yam base, essentially ingredients of cholesterol that go into making hormones. With a little chemistry knowledge -- and this is where the underground labs come in -- the powder is converted into tablets or synthetic liquids and creams, which are ingested or injected. The steroid accelerates muscle and tissue growth while dissolving fat.
It's mostly a vanity drug, with the average American user said to be someone around 30, well-educated, earning an above-average income and bent on increasing his or her physical attractiveness -- and not necessarily an athlete, according to a new study in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. Twenty years ago, steroids generally were the domain of power lifters, football players and track athletes. [Hum. Nee hoor - red.]
Steroids were easily obtained in this country with a doctor's prescription until 1990, when they were placed under the Controlled Substance Act. Laws were strengthened in 2004. Still, the drugs have never been more popular.
"The problem is worse because it's so much easier to get drugs, and that's because of the Internet," said Payne, the DEA spokesman.
In Seattle, authorities have successfully prosecuted just one steroid case in recent years, in 2005, convicting Franklin Witter of Marysville of steroid trafficking. He's serving a three-year prison term in Oregon.
But they are working on another. In July, authorities arrested Dr. Howard Levine on charges that he illegally sold steroids from his Capitol Hill office. Workout enthusiasts say trade in the illegal pills has boomed in certain gyms, particularly those popular within the gay community.
"I would say it's somewhat prevalent among the gym crowd, getting their ideal of the perfect body," said Tom Swanton. "I've seen a handful of people where it's obvious. You put two and two together -- the acne, the results they get -- and it's commented on. People know."
'Somebody knew somebody' The Aberdeen garage linked to steroids was built in the summer of 2006. Neighbors watched the structure emerge behind Ross' modest, single-story home, towering over it. The garage measures 744 square feet and cost $20,705, according to county assessor's records. People noticed Ross never parked his newly acquired boat or three vehicles, a black Suburban sport utility vehicle, white Toyota Tacoma truck and a red Toyota Camry, inside the new garage. They saw Federal Express and DSL mail-delivery trucks stop at that address almost daily. They heard the unemployed man had bought a tavern.
A month ago, federal agents stepped out of SUVs with tinted windows and put people in handcuffs and in the back seat. They say they confiscated steroids, human growth hormone, Valium, a pill press, $4,300 in cash, the boat and several weapons, including a .50-caliber sniper rifle similar to those used in the Iraq war, capable of hitting a target a couple of miles away.
Ross was taken to the federal detention center near SeaTac and booked and fingerprinted; his wife and friends went to the Grays Harbor County Jail.
"I'm just surprised something like that would be in Aberdeen," said Jesus Villalobos, a Ross neighbor and a casino-surveillance employee who watched with great interest as someone installed a camera one night on a nearby telephone pole. "You hear about steroids everywhere. Not here. What we're known for is meth labs." The federal indictment accuses Ross of working in concert with Goran Crnila, a Bosnian citizen living in Thailand, and Joshua Phillips, a Las Vegas resident. It says Crnila and Phillips created the Web site, steroidsuperboard.com, from which they openly promoted the use and sale of anabolic steroids and other illicit drugs. The board listed 30 distributors, including GA Labs, which was jointly owned by Crnila and Phillips, and Samar Lab, operated by Ross. Customers were urged to place orders by using encrypted e-mail services based in Vancouver, B.C.
Ross allegedly received steroid powder from China, ordering it through encrypted e-mail; converted it into tablet form in the garage; and sent the product to Phillips in Nevada. Crnila, who wasn't arrested until Oct. 12, was the bank, making and receiving payments to everyone.
How men in Aberdeen and Thailand allegedly were introduced and became business associates remains unclear to investigators, though the matchmaker likely was little more than cyberspace.
"Obviously somebody knew somebody, because you don't wake up and start cooking steroids," Grays Harbor County Sheriff Rick Scott said. "I think the Internet has shrunk the world to the size of a dime."
The DEA's Simmons suggested that the Chinese, with product to sell, and Americans, desperate for bodybuilding drugs -- and no Mexican middlemen to facilitate their arrangement as before -- likely found each other by default and in a hurry.
Not all that ambitious before, Ross might seem an unlikely candidate to engage in something as demanding as an underground lab. He's rarely ventured outside Aberdeen and Olympia, had limited schooling and worked a succession of menial jobs
"He fits the type, actually," said Assael, the New York author. "These are the kind of meatheads who do this sort of thing. Everybody's got a buddy in the bodybuilding community telling them they've got to do this. Trust me, it's not brain surgery."
Brazenly pushing illegal products on electronic billboards the past two years, steroid Web sites practically dared the DEA to come bust them, and the feds did. "The thing that's interesting to me are the Web sites, the bodybuilding sites and discussion boards," said Tim Coughlin, the San Diego-based assistant U.S. attorney heading the case. "Here were a certain amount of Web sites and distribution through encrypted e-mail and customers online that they thought was safe, and obviously it wasn't."
In busting the operation, there was more to it than cameras secretly mounted outside suspected lab sites. Federal investigators appear to have the ability to tap the Internet, though no one is officially saying that.
"We can't name the technology, and this is going to drive you crazy, but we have the capability, and we proved it in this case, to intercept electronic communication all the way to the buyer," the DEA's Payne said. "Typically, we don't focus on users, but we can now. We have the ability to intercept communication of thousands and thousands of people. That should scare people."
DEA offices have received steady calls from worried steroid users and probing journalists wanting to know if people found on damning e-mail exchanges with labs while placing orders will be prosecuted or simply exposed, such as high-profile athletes.
"It remains to be seen what if anything becomes of people who engaged in getting the drugs themselves," said Simmons, the San Diego DEA agent. "People keep calling and saying, 'What about the list? What about the list?' It's disingenuous."
Back on a budget After hiding out in an Olympia motel after his arrest, Ross recently returned home. Two menacing, barking dogs keep anyone from opening the gate and knocking on the front door. Ross isn't talking.
"I've got no comment," he told the P-I.
Ross has created a stir in Grays Harbor County, making steroids a topic of conversation.
This type of thing just doesn't happen here. Over the past 30 years, there have been just two criminal cases in the county involving performance-enhancing drugs.
A man was arrested attempting to sell black-market steroids obtained in Mexico, and a kid, after burglarizing a veterinary clinic, was caught trying to deal his take.
If convicted, Ross faces five years in prison. He already appears to be struggling some. The man who recently went on a rare spending binge is back on a tight budget.
For his first hearing in San Diego, Ross drove the 1,200 interstate highway miles to the federal courthouse with his wife and father alongside him rather than catch a flight.
Meantime, that expensive garage at 2500 Aberdeen Ave., a place with a story to tell, sits empty and idle.
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