Huge Developments in Soares' Steroid Investigation
April 20, 2007
We are starting to learn more about the ongoing steroid investigation, led by Albany County District Attorney David Soares.
In Albany County Court Friday, two more people indicted on charges, pled guilty. And as NEWS10's Dori Marlin reports, their cooperation is now providing "significant" information, to fuel the investigation.
38-year-old Monday Miller and 40-year-old Eugene Bolton, both of Texas, are now the third and fourth people to plead guilty in the investigation. For their plea deals, Miller receives just five years probation, and Bolton gets the same - plus, six months in jail.
The punishments they face were "greatly" reduced by the D.A.'s Office, in exchange for valuable information. And that is exactly what the two, who ran a clinic in Houston, have provided.
"People would call them based on ads in muscle magazines and car magazines - (they) would call up and say 'I wanna get bigger, I wanna' have better workouts in the gym'," says Chris Baynes, Assistant District Attorney with the Albany County D.A.'s Office.
The D.A.'s Office learned from there, the clinic - called "CNA" - would write up prescriptions for steroids, then fax those prescriptions to doctors in New York and Florida, to get signatures. The doctors would sign them without ever seeing a patient, receiving 50-dollars per prescription - then, send it back to the clinic.
From there, it would go to the so-called "big fish": Signature Pharmacy in Orlando.
"CNA would send it to Signature, Signature would bill the client, and send the drugs directly to the client - so the drugs never even went to Houston," Soares says.
The ring was finally busted when CNA started faxing prescriptions to a doctor, who turned out to be an undercover investigator.
According to Soares, Friday could be a turning point.
"They are a significant development in this case," says Soares. "And the cooperation that we have elicited from the individuals who have pled out today (Friday) will go very far in our case."
