Bodybuilding Attorney Erik Moje Gives Up California Home After Pleading Guilty to Steroid Importation

Erik Moje, an amateur bodybuilder and California attorney at law, pleaded guilty to the illegal importation of anabolic steroids as part of the DEA’s Operation Cyber Juice according to a statement released by United States Attorney Phillip A. Talbert on February 6, 2017. While most attorneys are defending steroid dealers, Moje was accused of being a steroid dealer himself. If an attorney can’t be a good steroid dealer, what hope is there for anyone else.

Before pleading guilty to importing steroids, Moje was indicted on a single charge of possession with intent to distribute anabolic steroids. Moje was busted attempting to import significant quantities of raw steroid powder from China. Given the general consensus on steroid forums that importing steroids via the U.S. Postal Service’s west coast mail centers in Los Angeles and San Francisco was inherently riskier, Moje devised a plan to import steroid powder through East Coast mail centers.

To import steroid powder through the New York international mail center, Moje devised a plan to have his friends on the east coast accept and receive steroid packages on his behalf and forward them to him.  In addition, Moje also found a private mail forwarding service in New York that would receive the inbound packages from China and then ship to to Moje in California via United Parcel Service (UPS) delivery.

While Moje’s made significant efforts to evade detection by law enforcement, it wasn’t enough to outsmart the police. Moje also used encryption to hide the financial and shipping details of his illegal internet orders of steroids from China. And again, the police again outsmarted Moje when they gained access to his encrypted emails and found evidence of illegal steroid purchases from a steroid powder source from December 1, 2013 until September 1, 2015.

It didn’t help Moje’s case when investigators discovered that he paid for the steroids from deposits made into the bank account for the Law Office of Eric Moje.

When police executed a search warrant on Moje’s residence in Turlock, California in September 2015, they foiled Moje’s efforts to hide evidence of his crimes yet again when they found a false wall in his garage where 538 ten milliliter vials of injectable steroids and 17,700 tablets of oral steroids were carefully hidden. The evidence appeared consistent with the manufacture of anabolic steroids from the imported raw powder. This was the basis of the steroid distributions charges in the original indictment.

During the raid, police seized $29,925 cash, Moje’s 2011 BMW 750Li and a virtual arsenal of firearms including a Beretta PX4 Storm .40 caliber pistol, Ruger LC9 9mm pistol, Kimbber 1911 Type .45 calier pistol, Smith and Wesson model 500 .50 caliber revolver, Remington model 200 .300 Win Mag caliber rifle, Savage Arms model 64 .22 caliber rifle, Mark II .22 caliber rifle, Mossberg 12 guage shotgun, Glock 35 .40 caliber pistol and a Ruger Mark III Target .22 caliber pistol.

In addition to forfeiting his cash, his car and his weapons, Moje agreed to forfeit his $330,000 Turlock home as part of his plea agreement. It’s quite a high price to pay for reducing the charges from steroid trafficking to merely steroid importation.

Moje faced up to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $500,000. But he will unquestionably receive a far more lenient punishment when he appears before U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd on May 15, 2017.

Source:

DOJ. (February 6, 2017). Turlock Attorney Pleads Guilty to Importation of Steroids. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/turlock-attorney-pleads-guilty-importation-steroids