Posted on 09/24/2007 7:52:59 PM PDT by alancarp
NEW YORK -- In a four-day series of daylight raids that ended Sunday, Drug Enforcement Administration agents shut down 26 underground steroid labs and made more than 50 arrests across the country, capping what agents are calling the largest performance-enhancing drug crackdown in U.S. history. The DEA also has identified 37 Chinese factories that purportedly supplied the raw materials for the labs, a DEA spokesman told ESPN.
The raids capped an 18-month probe that has netted 124 arrests in 27 states and closed 56 labs. The agency also seized $6.5 million and 532 pounds of raw steroid powder -- 308 pounds of it in the past week. Most of the raids took place in quiet suburban neighborhoods.
The investigation also focused on message boards where advice is traded about obtaining raw materials, as well as on the Web sites that help the labs sell finished products to the public. Hundreds of thousands of e-mails were intercepted, according to Dan Simmons, a San Diego-based special agent for the DEA. Simmons said that no professional athletes have been implicated so far but that the e-mails are being compiled into a massive database of names and are being analyzed.
The crackdown, dubbed "Raw Deal," grew out of a 2005 operation targeting eight Mexican labs that were responsible for 80 percent of America's underground steroid trade. Several large Chinese factories had been supplying the Mexican labs. When the Mexican labs were closed in what came to be known as "Operation Gear Grinder," those Chinese factories redirected their pipeline to the U.S.
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"China really stepped up to the plate to help us in this investigation," DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney said in Washington.
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(Excerpt) Read more at sports.espn.go.com ...
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Barry Bonds was deeply disappointed.
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