Steroid dealers use ruse to sell wares on eBay

EBay says it never received letter
Chestnut, the eBay official, rejected the assertion that the company had ignored a warning from Grassley about steroid sales, saying he never saw a letter from the drug caucus or heard from the DEA that people were systematically selling steroids on the site.

“I haven’t seen the letter ever,” he said. “… I was not aware that there was any significant, concerted effort to sell steroids on eBay.”

While the letters’ precise impact could not be determined, the congressional source said they did trigger a 98-pound-weakling response to the problem, one that was quickly outflanked by the steroid sellers.

“Before the hearing, they didn’t mask what they were selling. It was just steroids or Dbol or whatever,” the source said. “Afterward, they started saying they were selling photographs of steroids, so you’d see an 8-by-10 photograph of Dianabol and a description saying something like ‘this photograph has 200 pixels’ so you could delineate the amount of pills you were buying. Then came ‘books.’ You’ll see, next week, they won’t be using books anymore.”

The DEA did not return repeated calls from MSNBC.com seeking comment about the sale of steroids on eBay or statistics on the number of steroid cases the agency has pursued in the last year.

Filters adjusted to catch ‘books’
Chestnut, the eBay official charged with keeping the site free of fraud and auctions of illegal goods, acknowledged that the steroid sellers had evaded the site’s security filters by listing the drugs as books. “We’ve now made an adjustment in our system so that in the future it will catch that,” he said.

He also said that after being informed of the problem last week, he took immediate action to discipline what he described as a handful of perpetrators responsible for the steroid sales.

“We threw all of them (the sellers) off the site and we told them that because they were doing something that violated the rules and the law, we were compiling all the information we had and proactively turning it over the law enforcement. We have reported this to the DEA and we’re asking them to investigate this.”

'Can I get in trouble?'
One of the sellers who sold steroids to the NABP investigator confirmed in an e-mail exchange with MSNBC.com that eBay suspended his account last week and said it was forwarding information on the sale to authorities.

“Can they do that? Can I get in trouble?” wrote the seller, who identified himself as a student at the University of Florida and claimed he had obtained the drug by stealing it from “someone’s bathroom” during a college party before later deciding to sell it on eBay.

The answer to those questions are “yes” and “yes,” according to Rick Collins, a New York attorney and author of “Legal Muscle: Anabolics in America,” who said that even a steroid seller with no previous criminal record could face severe repercussions.

“It’s typically charged as a felony and it’s not uncommon to see jail time, ranging from months to years depending on state law,” he said.

Sellers face problems beyond jail
“But even if jail is not part of the ultimate sentence, the ramifications of the arrest and or conviction can be significant," Collins said. "For example, a person with a professional license, a teacher, a broker, can lose their employment based on a drug conviction, including possession of steroids.”

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Collins said that postal authorities in particular have become more aggressive in attempting to intercept prescription drugs, including steroids, purchased via the Internet and mailed to customers in the United States.

“The scrutiny of packages coming into the United States has increased tremendously,” he said. “There are X-ray machines at ports of entry where foreign packages are inspected, and suspicious packages can be opened and the contents examined or tested.”

Bob Anderson, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, said the agency “aggressively pursues persons or groups who ship illegal drugs through the mail.”

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