Steroid maker to help NFL plug loopholes

[stomperrob]

Steroid Maker Says He Taught About N.F.L. Loopholes
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Published: May 2, 2008

PLANO, Tex. — One day last week, David Jacobs took out two measuring cups, put a pot on the stove at his home here and demonstrated how he used to turn raw powder into steroids.

For more than a year, Jacobs operated a makeshift pharmaceutical lab out of his kitchen in his one-story suburban home. Each month, he said, he sold about a thousand of his own bottles of steroids and another thousand kits of human growth hormone smuggled from China to dealers across the United States. Among the dealers he supplied were two N.F.L. players, Jacobs said, who would then supply a handful of other N.F.L. players with the banned substances.

Jacobs’s business as one of the largest steroid producers in Texas came to a halt in April 2007 when federal agents raided his home and confiscated thousands of units of steroids. Later, as part of Operation Raw Deal, a nationwide investigation of the importation and distribution of performance-enhancing drugs, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute anabolic steroids. On Thursday in Sherman, Tex., Jacobs was sentenced to three years of probation.

Jacobs, a former body builder, said he advised about 10 N.F.L. players on how to exploit loopholes in the league’s drug-testing program. One way, he said, was to have team doctors write them prescriptions for drugs that would mask steroid use.

Jacobs’s case received national attention because a Web site for his supplements store boasted of providing counseling to several players on the Dallas Cowboys and the Atlanta Falcons.

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rest of article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/sport ... f=football