NFLer, Hs coach cited as part of $3M roid buy
A PAIR OF online steroid, Xanax and Viagra dealers pushed nearly $3 million worth of products in five years to buyers — including an NFL player, college athletes, cops, military members, doctors and attorneys, prosecutors said.
Charges against Mark Sanchez and Callaway Crain, both 34, were unsealed in Manhattan Supreme Court last week in connection to what prosecutors said was a lucrative store using the moniker “Next Day Gear” via websites that accepted untraceable payment methods from Western Union, bitcoin and other cryptocurrency.
Sanchez and Crain, who are from Texas, “have been operating an online business that sells and offers for sale anabolic steroids and other controlled substances and prescription medications that anabolic steroid users need in order to counteract the negative effects, including Xanax and Viagra” since 2012, Assistant District Attorney Adam Maltz said at Sanchez’s arraignment Monday.
“The defendants sold to college football players, an NFL football player, fitness trainers, police officers, members of the Armed Forces serving overseas, drug dealers, doctors, lawyers and even a high school athletic coach,” Maltz added, according to a transcript of the proceeding.
The DA’s office has not disclosed the identities of the pro athlete or the other buyers.
Maltz, who called the evidence “overwhelming,” said the account used to send the items “shipped over 10,000 packages since 2013” with costs in excess of $32,000.
The illicit e-commerce business allegedly made more than $2.87 million since 2013.
Sanchez, Crain and a third man, Scott Moore, are charged with conspiracy and money laundering. Sanchez, who shares the same name as the former Jets quarterback, and Crane, face additional counts of criminal tax fraud. Moore is accused of picking up Western Union payments for the business.
Sanchez’s home “revealed a laboratory that the defendant was operating in order to mix and bottle the compounds,” the assistant DA reported.
He purchased substances from China and has “traveled to Mexico, Taiwan, Abu Dhabi twice, to South Korea and Hong Kong” since 2015, “and some of those trips were in furtherance of his business enterprise,” Maltz told Justice Mark Dwyer during bail arguments.