Fort Bend County lies directly on a major cocaine route between the Mexican border and Houston – but the county’s largest drug bust in history involves the manufacture and illegal sale of anabolic steroids.
County and federal officials from the Drug Enforcement Agency, the IRS, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FDA met at the Fort Bend County Fairgrounds this afternoon to announce details of the investigation they called “Farmacia de Juicy Phruit.”
As they spoke, suspects arrested in the investigation were being processed at the fairgrounds, although it was unclear why the sheriff’s office and jail weren’t being used.
“The bottom line is, Richmond, Rosenberg, Sugar Land and all of Fort Bend County is a safer place today,” said U.S. Attorney Tim Johnson. “In excess of 50 drug dealers have been taken off the streets.”
Fort Bend County Sheriff Milton Wright said the investigation began locally in 2006, and was joined by federal drug agents. He said 49 people have been arrested on warrants in Texas and 17 have been arrested following federal indictments, and more arrests are expected.
Other law enforcement sources said more than 200 people in Texas, California, Indiana, Georgia, and possibly other states, have been indicted in the case.
Meanwhile, law enforcement agents in Lakeland, Fla., arrested a former bodybuilder whom the New York Daily News reported has admitted to selling anabolic steroids to players on the Washington Nationals and the Washington Capitals.
Fort Bend County District Attorney John Healey said he doesn’t know if the Florida case is related to the Fort Bend County arrests, but called it “awfully coincidental if it’s not.”
Healey, Wright, Johnson and other officials said the investigation has centered on the illegal making and selling of steroids, but also said other drugs were involved – among them Vicodin, Viagra and MDMA (Ecstasy).
Healey said the majority of those indicted in Texas will be handled by his office, however, he said he does not have the names of any of the individuals indicted or arrested.
However, Johnson named Charles Brock Falkenhagen, owner of a Sugar Land company called Fitness Consultants, as being at the center of the investigation.
Johnson said Falkenhagen had been importing “human growth hormone” from a Chinese company called GenScience Pharmaceutical Co.
Wright said some of the anabolic steroids and other drugs came from Mexico, while chemicals came from China. Apparently some defendants combined these components, as Wright said finished steroids were “manufactured” in secret laboratories in Fort Bend County.
Healey said that most of the indictments are for possession and conspiracy to possess, and possession with the intent to deliver, anabolic steroids.
Healey also said the local cases involve “physical trainers,” their clients, and business professionals. Sheriff Wright said the trainers worked at gyms in Fort Bend and Harris County.
Wright said those arrested were involved in a “loosely knit” organization whose members might have had each other’s names “on their speed dials.”
“Today, this clandestined service has been completely dismantled,” Wright said. He added that while steroids don’t have a reputation as being terribly harmful, “there are a lot of broken homes and people who have been hurt” because of the side effects of the drug.
Those include aggressive behavior, liver damage and cancer, among other things.
1. June 2009 at 11:20 am
These arrests are a waste of taxpayer time and money. Will we be arresting women for botox treatments next? What people do to their own bodies is their business, otherwise junk food would be the biggest crime of all!