Bodybuilding Attorney Erik Moje Sentenced to Nine Months in Prison on Steroid Charges

Erik Moje, an amateur competitive bodybuilder formerly licensed to practice law in the State of California, has been sentenced to nine months in prison followed by two years of supervised release. Moje had hoped to avoid prison with a sentence of home confinement so that he could receive proper treatment for his medical issues.

Moje was arrested after special agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other members of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) raided his Turlock residence as part of Operation Cyber Juice in September 2015. Agents found 538 ten milliliter vials of injectable steroids and 17,700 tablets of oral steroids carefully hidden in a secret compartment within his home. Moje pleaded guilty to the illegal importation of anabolic steroids in February 2017.

Kevin Little, the defense attorney representing Moje, said that his client was perfectly willing to accept the government’s recommended sentence of 11-months. But Little recognized that U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd had considerable flexibility in “determining where and how his sentence should be served”.

Towards this end, Little asked for “probation with a custodial component of home confinement for up to 11 months” to satisfy the penalties for his criminal conviction. Moje had already agreed to give the government his $330,000 home and forfeited a substantial amount of cash as part of his plea agreement.

Little argued that home confinement was necessary because Moje would not receive the proper medical care while incarcerated. Little cited multiple medical and psychiatric conditions afflicting Moje requiring prescribed medications and medical procedures that would likely be disrupted while he was in prison. These “prejudicial interruptions in medications” that would face Moje in prison would seriously compromise his health and well-being.

Specifically, Moje required biweekly therapeutic phlebotomies for his polycythemia; testosterone enanthate for his hypogonadism; Adderall for his attention-deficit disorder; Xanax for panic attacks; Gabapentin for neuropathy; Montelukast and Zyrtec for asthma; and Cialis for prostate hyperplasia. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) medical policy denies prescriptions of Xanax and Cialis under all circumstances. The BOP won’t prescribe Adderall until after 11-months incarceration. It won’t prescribed testosterone for at least 6-months. There were additional restrictions on Moje’s other medications as well.

Federal prosecutors in the Office of U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert casually dismissed Moje concern about receiving adequate medical care. The feds told the court that Moje’s polycythemia was secondary polycythemia and was caused by his use of anabolic steroids. Prosecutors seemed to imply that Moje’s polycythemia would resolve itself once he was weened off testosterone in prison. Prosecutors also quoted an article they found on the internet that said “athletes on anabolic steroids who develop secondary polycythemia are not candidates for phlebotomy.”

Furthermore, prosecutors essentially characterized Moje’s TRT doctor (Jonathan Annis) as a quack whose “views regarding the cause and treatment of polycythemia may be clouded” by his participation in bodybuilding contests. The feds also noted that Annis was currently on probation by the California Medical Board and was “prohibited from engaging in the solo practice of medicine”.

Judge Drozd largely sided with the government lawyers although he reduced the sentence to 9-months in prison instead of the prosecutors’ recommendation of 11-months. The practical consequence of this means that Moje will likely suffer extended disruptions in all of his medications.

Source:

DOJ. (September 13, 2017). Turlock Attorney Sentenced for Importing Steroids. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/turlock-attorney-sentenced-importing-steroids