Plano resident's steroid distribution ring was one of the largest in U.S.
By JASON TRAHAN and GARY JACOBSON / The Dallas Morning News
The Great Wall of China proved to be too much for Plano's David Jacobs, a former Marine.
Hiking it in 2002 left him winded, feeling weak and embarrassed. It marked a turning point in his life, and he vowed to change.
He became a workout fiend. Then a training guru. And somewhere along the way, a self-taught chemist who produced high-grade anabolic steroids that would transform some of his customers into walking billboards for performance-enhancing drugs, Mr. Jacobs and people who know him say.
That helped Mr. Jacobs build one of the largest steroid and human growth hormone distribution rings in the country, and landed him in the middle of one of the largest trafficking investigations of its kind in the nation's history, authorities say.
Authorities suspect that Mr. Jacobs, 35, and his associates supplied steroids to NFL players, professional bodybuilders and police officers.
Authorities also are pursuing possible links between Mr. Jacobs' network and some of the pharmacies and anti-aging clinics in New York and Florida that serviced professional baseball players and other athletes. And one of Mr. Jacobs' co-defendants admitted selling small amounts of steroids to the owner of the Houston weight-loss clinic recently linked to baseball legend Roger Clemens.
Mr. Jacobs, who had a top middleman who sold nearly $30,000 worth of steroids a month, is one of seven defendants who have pleaded guilty and await sentencing as early as next month.
"David is the kingpin," said Jason Stern, an attorney who represents bodybuilders and is a former NFL agent. "I think this case could be the NFL's BALCO."
Mr. Stern also hosts an Internet radio show about bodybuilding called Big Nation. He has interviewed Mr. Jacobs on his show.
Those familiar with the investigation say it's not clear exactly where it will lead or if others will eventually be charged. The BALCO case involving high-profile athletes, including Major League Baseball's Barry Bonds, began in 2002 and is still playing out.
Mr. Jacobs, whose father won two world trampoline titles and was an NCAA gymnastics champ in the late 1960s, has not publicly implicated any others in his distribution ring. But he has talked to The Dallas Morning News in general terms over several months about the scope of his operation.
A new mission
It all started in 2002, when Mr. Jacobs had a humbling experience while on a business trip in China. Out of shape and with a pronounced paunch, he got winded while climbing the Great Wall.
When he returned to Finland, where he was living while working for Nokia, he found a gym and put himself on a regular regimen. A bodybuilder he met there told him how to get much better results using steroids.
He eventually left corporate life and became part owner of the gym. But a business partnership went sour, leaving him broke and with barely enough to afford a plane ticket back to North Texas.
When he returned in 2005, Mr. Jacobs, who was born in Ohio but grew up in the Dallas area, became a personal trainer and immersed himself in the local bodybuilding community.
At Lewisville Lake's Party Cove one weekend, he met his first pro bodybuilder, Art Atwood. The two became friends, and Mr. Atwood helped train the up-and-coming rookie.
Both men were taking steroids, but were unhappy with shoddy Mexican imports.
Mr. Jacobs went online and found a solution: recipes for steroids using raw Chinese powder. Mr. Jacobs soon parlayed his knowledge of Asia, gleaned during his Nokia business trips, into contacts with English-speaking middlemen to the Chinese steroid powder factories.
He says he wired money to China through Western Union, and the factories shipped him the powder in boxes. Often, they included a fake lab report claiming the powder was for legal nutritional supplements. Mr. Jacobs eventually became a supplement store owner. After tinkering with his concoctions he began selling his compounds, along with Mr. Atwood, according to court documents. Mr. Jacobs initially sold steroids within the close-knit bodybuilding community.
"People were walking billboards for the stuff I was making," Mr. Jacobs said.
Mr. Jacobs may have been his own best advertisement. He says he went from weighing 175 pounds in 2002 to a muscular 272 pounds when he was arrested last year.
Link to Alabama business
Some of the vials sold through Mr. Jacobs' network bore the stamp of Applied Pharmacy Services in Alabama, a compounding pharmacy, meaning it makes drugs. According to Major League Baseball's Mitchell Report, a federal and New York state investigation has linked APS to sales of steroids and HGH to professional baseball players.
As part of that investigation, authorities raided anti-aging operations, including the South Beach Rejuvenation clinic in Florida, and Lowen's Pharmacy in New York, which may have supplied steroids to police there. Investigators have questioned Mr. Jacobs about these companies.
In 2006, one of his top middlemen introduced Mr. Jacobs to Matt Lehr at a Dallas nightclub. Mr. Lehr was a lineman for the Atlanta Falcons, having left the Cowboys two years prior after a falling out with then-coach Bill Parcells over Mr. Lehr's association with a Dallas topless club manager. Mr. Lehr kept a home in Denton County.
Mr. Jacobs said that it was a few months after he met Mr. Lehr that the NFL suspended the lineman for four games for flunking a drug test.
Mr. Lehr's attorney, Paul Coggins, has since said that his client acknowledges his mistake, and is now free of banned substances. Authorities in Mr. Jacobs' case are investigating Mr. Lehr on allegations that he distributed steroids, possibly to other players, but he has not been charged with any crime.
Mr. Coggins said this week prosecutors told him that his client would not be indicted. U.S. Attorney John Ratcliffe declined to talk about Mr. Lehr's status, but noted the case is ongoing.
In past cases, the government has usually not prosecuted users, but rather distributors.
Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Lehr became fast friends. Mr. Lehr was a longtime fan of bodybuilding, and even after his suspension, continued to fly around the country, attending shows.
Mr. Jacobs says Mr. Lehr frequently introduced him as his brother. And Mr. Lehr took Mr. Jacobs to the Falcons Christmas party in 2006 at the Georgia Aquarium, Mr. Jacobs said.
Falcons spokesman Reggie Roberts said players invite their own guests and 800 people attended the team's holiday party, so there is no way to know who exactly was there. He said the team has no knowledge of Mr. Jacobs.
By late 2006, Mr. Atwood broke off dealings with Mr. Jacobs, later describing him as "reckless" to investigators, according to court documents.
Package intercepted
But it was a different kind of recklessness that eventually brought Mr. Jacobs down.
A bad packing job, actually.
On March 19, 2007, the United Parcel Service intercepted a soggy package sent from Mr. Jacobs' Plano home, bound for Wichita, Kan. When officials opened the box, they found a broken glass vial of what turned out to be steroids.
Authorities arrested the man in Kansas who had ordered steroids from Mr. Jacobs, court documents say. Jamie Mongeau, an amateur bodybuilder, told investigators that Mr. Jacobs was his supplier.
After the Mongeau intercept, federal investigators asked Plano narcotics detectives to set up surveillance on Mr. Jacobs' home, according to court documents. On April 20, 2007, authorities saw Andrew Schenck, who had bought steroids from Mr. Atwood beginning in 2004, leaving Mr. Jacobs' house with a bag of steroids he had just purchased, the documents say.
Mr. Schenck's arrest gave authorities what they wanted: probable cause to get into Mr. Jacobs' home, court documents show.
That evening, inside the home Mr. Jacobs shared with then-girlfriend Amber Jarrell, a female fitness competitor, they found steroids, his steroids lab, kilos of raw powder, thousands of pills and some guns, the court documents say.
Nearly three weeks after Mr. Jacobs' home was raided, on May 9, authorities searched the Dallas apartment of Matt Williams, who helped both Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Atwood make steroids, court documents show. He eventually became one of seven co-defendants charged in Mr. Jacobs' network.
About a week after Mr. Williams was busted, authorities orchestrated a buy-bust on Mr. Atwood at a Plano Hooters restaurant, according to a search warrant affidavit. In his apartment, they found steroids, the affidavit states.
Mr. Atwood is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Jacobs investigation. His case is pending.
Mr. Jacobs said this week that, on the advice of his attorney, he will not name names of NFL players to whom he sold steroids. He also says he didn't name names to investigators. He didn't have to, he says, because investigators tracking his enterprise had ample documentation of who his clients were by the time he was questioned.
He said that pro football is rife with drug use.
"If people can't see what's obvious in front of them when they watch pro football, then one should never underestimate the power of denial."
Brian Dobson, owner of Arlington's MetroFlex gym, which produced eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman and where Mr. Jacobs used to train with other bodybuilding friends, said that since his bust, Mr. Jacobs has been ostracized by the bodybuilding community he once serviced.
"A lot of people hate him," Mr. Dobson said. "To a lot of the other guys who were his buddies, once he got caught, he became the black plague."
He said that although he doesn't allow them in his gym, he has seen the benefits of steroid use in athletes he's trained.
"I've seen thousands of people take steroids, and I haven't seen anybody kill over it. Most all the guys making it to the top ranks in the contact sports have taken steroids at some point. But not when it's testing time."
jtrahan@dallasnews.com; gjacobson@dallasnews.com
