Sly Cops to Hording Hormones Down Under
by Natalie Finn
Mon, 14 May 2007 09:57:10 PM PDT
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Here's hoping Sylvester Stallone's next trip to Australia isn't so rocky.
Hoping to put his unintentional smuggling days behind him, Stallone pleaded guilty Tuesday to bringing 48 vials of illegal human growth hormone into Australia in February while on a promotional tour for Rocky Balboa.
The famously muscled actor, who was not required to appear in Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney, copped to two counts of importing and possessing a prohibited substance after, upon his arrival Feb. 16 at Sydney International Airport, he checked off the "no" box on his customs form when asked whether he had traveled with "medicines, steroids, firearms or any kind of illicit drugs."
A search of Stallone's luggage, however, turned up Jintropin, a non-FDA-approved substance whose main ingredient is the synthetic growth hormone somatropin, which is considered a performance-enhancing drug in Australia and is illegal to possess without a permit from the drug-regulating Therapeutic Goods Administration. Human growth hormone, or HGH, is thought by some to have anti-aging properties because it promotes muscle regeneration.
"It was just a minor misunderstanding," Stallone told reporters at the time, calling the contraband "not dangerous" and something that he's "taken for years." The customs officers "were just doing their jobs. I just didn't understand some of the rules here."
The maximum penalty for such an offense is five years in prison and a $91,500 fine, but Stallone can only be slapped with an $18,000 fine for each count because the case is being handled in a local, not federal, court.
While Sly copped to transporting and possessing HGH, however, he contested the prosecution's charge that he hid four bottles of testosterone in his luggage and then, after experiencing a "consciousness of guilt," tossed them off the balcony before officials searched his suite at the waterfront Park Hyatt Sydney.
According to prosecutor David Agius, Stallone said that the testosterone had been in plain view his bag and simply wasn't seized by customs, but "customs says that the four bottles of testosterone were not in that bag and not observed on that night in the search of the bag."
"He threw the four vials from his hotel window into the garden beds below when he knew customs officers" were coming the following day," Agius said, per the Sydney Morning Herald. "If he believed customs had authorized his continuing possession of testosterone, what reason would he have for throwing that material out of that window?"
The serial sequel-maker's hotel room was searched three days after his arrival in the country and he was allowed to decamp from Down Under without delay.
Stallone is expected to be sentenced next Monday. His attorney, Phillip Boulten, argued in court that his client should not be treated like a criminal.
"The defendant, Sylvester Stallone, is extremely mortified about having been involved in this incident," Boulten said, adding that the 60-year-old Rocky star and scribe was using both Jintropin and testosterone under medical supervision.
"This is not some back-alley body builder dealing covertly with some banned substance in some sort of secret way," he said. "This was a legitimate medical condition being treated by doctors of the top ranking order in the West Coast of the United States."
After all, only the top doctors can be relied upon to treat that pesky condition known as aging.
