"Declaring the prosecution an effort by the government “to destroy the weightlifting industry”
They had one of their guys act like an FDA agent to move the mislabeled supplements -
"On or about August 4, 2016, JAMES BOCCUZZI, sent an email to a wholesale customer and attached a document entitled "Certificate of Free Sale," which falsely described BOCCUZZI as an FDA employee. In the email, BOCCUZZI wrote, "This is the best I can do. I dont [sic] even feel comfortable doing this because I am impersonating the FDA and our business could get shut down, tons of people will lose their jobs." "
They tried hide the sale of prohormones -
"On or about February 16, 2017, ANTHONY VENTRELLA, after being informed that a search warrant was being conducted by FDA at VENTRELLA's business, sent a text message to one of his employees that said, "Shit. If you can hide the pros [prohormones] please
do." "
They knew it was illegal to sell Ostarine under their "Ostapure" -
"On or about October 9, 2015, PHILLIP BRAUN answered an email from a customer about SARMs, including Ostapure, and said, "Illegal to sell them!"
They established a bunch of shell corps to funnel the illegal supplements through -
"On or about March 13, 2014, ROBERT DIMAGGIO, in an email to AARON SINGERMAN about FDA enforcement announcements concerning the designer steroid products Methadrol and Super DMZ RX 2.0, told SINGERMAN that"[ o ]nee you get an FDA letter I would move all of the MDE and SDMZ that is left to a different location (in case they show up), and remove them from the website, and sell it to the retailers only [ un ]til its [sic] gone."
"On or about April 16, 2014, AARON SINGERMAN, PHILLIP BRAUN, ANTHONY VENTRELLA, and Unindicted Co-conspirator 2 caused Fight Pharm to be incorporated under the laws of Florida as a limited liability company."
Etc, etc....
But, yes, it is some grand plot to “to destroy the weightlifting industry”
.
Here's the indictment, pages 11 - 17, under "overt acts" really lays out how dumb these guys were. There are 12 year old crack dealers that are smarter than these guys -
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1143411/download .