Written by Bruce Kneller
08 April 2007
Most of the time, my column discusses a variety of new or exciting drugs and cutting-edge sports performance supplements. I have the luxury of reporting cool information while coming off as a pompous hard-ass with a cavalier attitude. I could be a paper tiger and it doesn't matter. But don't mistake the carefree attitude for either philosophy or modus operandi you might want to adopt in your quest to "get the goods," so to speak. Even the most experienced, jaded, salty veteran suffering from delusions of police persecution can get totally burned down and stung due to a single stupid move, comment, bad timing or just sheer shitty luck. After all, in the craps table we call "life," everyone rolls a seven or an 11 eventually.  

The following is one of those crappy stories, a case of exceptionally bad luck. It's as pretty close to a worst case scenario as you'll ever want to get. (Yes, I'm sure we can think of worse scenarios, but this one truly sucks). Most of you who undertake the type of activity this gentleman was engaged in might think, "This can't happen to me, no way, no how, never!" Well, you're wrong. This guy never thought anything like he describes in his narrative to me could or would happen to him, but guess what? It did.

As my former mentor, the late steroid guru, Dan Duchaine drilled into my head, "It's not if you will get caught, but merely a matter of when." And remember, Duchaine was arguably one of the craftier, slick and intelligent "steroid importers" the world has ever seen (remember the old DDR and bolasterone?). But even Diamond Dan spent a number of years in the federal penitentiary when his luck "ran out."  Think about all that long and hard after you read this story and then decide about that vacation to Cancun or Baja for spring break or graduation where you thought it might be a cool opportunity to get  some incredible ass, as well as buy some fantastically low-priced "souvenirs" of an anabolic sort. The story you're about to read (sent to me by a reader) is becoming more and more common every day, guys. Read on and weep.

Dear MD Readers,
You are not as safe as you think you are if you're going to Mexico with the intent to purchase bodybuilding drugs in order to smuggle them back to the states. I have traveled extensively all over the Mexican border towns, making dozens of "buys" at border pharmacies and graneros in order to bring a bunch of stuff back either to use or sell at a handsome profit. I've made buys and done this type of thing probably a dozen times in the last two years without any problem and I have brought back anywhere from 10 Sustanon 250 Redijects to thousands of vials of Mexican veterinary gear at a time. So let's say I'm not exactly an amateur when it comes to obtaining and smuggling gear across the border.

I never had any problems with the law until this last time, "Lucky #13," when I made a quick trip down I-5 from San Diego into Tijuana to see a friend who owns a granero. I'm not going to go into all the long drawn-out and trivial details about my latest and now, my final, trip to Mexico for making a gear run. But I will say this: If the police want to search you down in Tijuana, they are going to search you whether you like it not. They do not need probable cause, they do not need a reason. You look at them the wrong way, you walk funny, some Mexi-cop doesn't like the color of your shirt, you look like a bodybuilder or someone who has some money, they can "fine" you for it and that's reason enough.

And if they stop you, it comes down to this: They "say," you "do." You don't "do," you get your face bounced off the pavement, a "wood shampoo," your shoulders dislocated, handcuffed and finally, you go to jail. Now I know some of the people reading this are saying, "I smell bullshit. There is no way this could happen, especially in broad daylight with a ton of witnesses around on a busy street in downtown TJ." To these naïve gringos I say go ahead and keep doing what you're doing and when it's your turn to get caught, you will see what I'm talking about.I used to think getting the gear in Mexico was child's play. Well, in reality, this is not some child's game we are playing here and there has to come a time in everyone's life when they say the ultimate rewards are not worth the risks incurred.

Trip #13 almost got me sent away to a Mexican prison for a good 10-20 years because a police officer who didn't like the way I looked decided to plant a small amount of some oxycodone tablets in my pick-up truck while he was searching it in a parking lot. I was down in TJ with a good buddy and when we walked up to my truck, the TJ Police Officers were there waiting for us. Immediately, they told us to put our hands on the hood of the car, put our face on the hood and spread our legs. One of the cops searched us in a way most of you would not really appreciate, but ultimately he found nothing illegal "on" us. One of the other cops searched the truck and he found maybe four dozen bottles of Ttokkyo Primoplus and 40 bottles of Quality Vet Deca, but hey, that is legal down there, right?

Didn't matter, the cops confiscated them anyway and told us it was illegal and that we had no possible idea how much trouble we were in and blah, blah, blah. Now, my buddy and I knew the gear was totally legal to have in Mexico and we kept trying to tell the cops it was all legal, but this only served to piss them off even more. Next thing you know, the police officer in the truck says he found a small Ziplock baggie that had  "suspicious white tablets in it that looked like OxyContin" in the spare tire in my truck. Now I know some readers who think they're legal scholars are saying, "Oh, well, that's where this dude fucked up, and so forth. Believe what you want. The "baggie of pills" wasn't ours. We were set up. Basically, the Mexican cops wanted to extort a lot of money from us because they thought we were easy marks and looked like we had plenty of cash, or could get it. But the amount they demanded was an amount neither my friend nor I had with us or could obtain in Mexico.

Because we could not pay them off right there on the spot in the parking lot, they towed my truck to the police station where they ripped all the body panels off it, essentially destroying an almost new 2002 Ford Expedition. What did they find in the truck? Not a damned thing! One of the cop bosses or the head cop kept trying to get us to give them a substantial amount of money. They said that if we could afford to buy "all those steroids, we must have a lot of money and we just didn't want to cooperate and pay the fine (their euphemism for paying extortion). We just didn't have the kind of money they demanded because we spent almost all we had on the juice they confiscated.
I whispered to my friend that if he got the chance to get out, he should go; otherwise nobody is ever going to know where the fuck we were. My wife is Latino and from Mexico, I'm Caucasian from the U.S. and my buddy was also a Latino from Mexico. This is important information as you'll soon see. The cops separated my buddy from me and took him to an ATM machine and forced him to withdraw $400 from his account. Then they let him go and told him to leave the country and never come back, or they'd be waiting for him and he would not be this "lucky" next time around. I was not to get off so easy.

The cops hauled my ass all around Tijuana for the entire evening in handcuffs and leg irons. They put me on Univision (a Mexican television station) at one point with cartons of all sorts of drugs around me, stuff I had never seen before, and they started questioning me on television. I remembered something I read in Rick Collins' book Legal Muscle, and just lowered my head and refused to answer. However, Rick's advice is for people popped in the states. This was Mexico. The cops seemed to get bored after an hour or so of my silence, so they finally stopped the television interrogation.

Once again, they hauled me up by my shoulders and ran my ass all over these government-type buildings to meet "inspectors," people who would be "examining" the "evidence." I learned something interesting at this point. Unlike in America, where there are chains of custody forms and tight control over the quantity and identity of the evidence, as well as who has it, when they had it and where it went, this type of thing doesn't exist at all in Mexico. There is no chain of custody for evidence and if the police say you did something wrong, you did something wrong. It's up to you, your attorney, or your wallet to prove that the police are lying or "made an error."

No Penthouse Suite
Eight hours after this nightmare had started, I was finally photographed in the jail for my mug shot, officially arrested and put into a small cell with a toilet that was overflowing. The cell was perhaps six by eight and had no sink. A small overhead light bulb hang from the ceiling by an extension cord and that was it. No chair, no bed. It stank like three-day-old shit, it was hotter than hell and the place was swarming with annoying little black flies that bit nonstop. I was never offered any food, but some greasy-looking guy with no teeth came by and offered me a tin cup full of water from a bucket he was carrying. The water, if indeed that's what it was, looked more like gray coffee and since I wasn't up for a case of the shits, I declined the drink. So let's say these accommodations didn't quite rival the penthouse suite at the Waldorf-Astoria.

I found out by talking to the guy in the next cell that per Mexican law, the cops have to conclude their investigation within 48 hours of "officially" arresting you. Then they have to charge you or let you go. After a sleepless night in this septic tank of a cell, I was allowed to make a single phone call and I called my wife. My buddy had made it back just fine and relayed to my family what happened so they were expecting my call. My father-in-law got in touch with a friend in Tijuana who was a mid-level government bureaucrat to see if he could somehow help me out. Thank God for that! Dirty, stinky and hungry, I was then hauled into a small room to meet with the Mexican prosecutor.

He told me he could get me out of this but he, too, wanted money- the equivalent of $8,000 American. I told him I wanted to speak to the U.S. Consulate before I said anything to anyone or made any "deals."  Now, if you think the U.S. Consulate is going to help you when you're in a jam like this, you're in for a rude awakening. The asshole diplomat dude just told me I have the right to a lawyer and handed me a list of attorneys for me to pick from. Then he read the charges against me. The entire police report was utter bullshit, a complete fabrication. It read that I was alone and that they found oxycodone tablets (this was determined wit no lab analysis) in my pockets and in my truck.  It read that the officer saw a bag of white tablets fall out of my pocket and that he gave chase. It stated I was running from them and all this other crap.

Now why, if I were running, would I hold onto the thing that would get me arrested? I would've had plenty of opportunity to get rid of the stuff if I was indeed running from them. And why would I go back to my truck if I saw a bunch of cops there, if I had oxycodone pills hidden in it? At this time, I had a right to make a statement and tell my side. But I was told by the idiots from the U.S. Consulate that if I couldn't prove anything I was going to say, there was virtually no chance the Mexican courts would believe me over the cops. I was actually told by an interpreter that it would be better to say I had the oxycodone for myself and was an addict because then the judge would go easier on me. It seems if I had oxycodone and was not using it, then I was basically and indirectly admitting I was a narcotics dealer.

Great Choices
What great choices I had! I could choose to lie and admit to having oxycodone that was my personal stash to feed a habit, or have the judge think I was an international drug dealer. Finally, two days after this nightmare began and 30 minutes before I was to be arraigned before the judge, my father-in-law showed up and made a deal with the guy prosecuting my case. The prosecutor wanted $8,000 to make the problem, "disappear." My father-in-law offered $4,000 and ultimately, they split the difference and agreed on $6,000 as the "fine," which of course, had to be paid in cash, in American currency, in the next 30 minutes. My father-in-law paid the six grand and wouldn't you now it, I was immediately released and told it as all just a huge misunderstanding.

The prosecutor had some corrupt Mexican doctor write a note saying the oxycodone was actually prescribed for me by him for chronic back pain and the police made a big mistake and were truly sorry for any inconvenience.
I never got my truck back, it somehow "disappeared" from the police station with the cops claiming it was never there in the first place. Mr. Kneller, I want all your readers at MD to understand something. As an American citizen, you have rights in the U.S., but once you cross the border into Mexico, all bets are off. If it were not for my Mexican father-in-law intervening, I would be in jail for a minimum of two years, and maybe as long as 10-20. Nobody ever thinks it's going to happen to them; hey, you're just picking up a few bottles of steroids, right? You're minding your own business and you don't want a problem, you don't want to hassle anyone.

But the Mexican cops, especially in Tijuana and other heavy tourist areas have people- snitches, spies- watching all the graneros and pharmacies looking for "big muscular gringos." Sometimes, you play this game and you think you're good at it and you get cocky because it seems so easy; you'll never lose. You're more concerned about U.S. Customs than anything else. Well, friend, I'm living proof you can lose- no, you will lose- and when you do, you will lose like you can't imagine. Just remember what it is you're going to lose and learn to appreciate what you have. I lost an expensive truck, $6,000 and three days of my life. It could have been far worse; I could have lost my wife, kids, house. Everything that truly mattered to me I'd never see again.

Friend, you do not understand the reality of it all until something like this happens. I learned the hard way. I got off relatively easy because this happened in Mexico and my wife is Mexican. Because of  that, I do not have a record in the U.S. I'm counting my blessings now. I will never set foot inside Mexico again.  And if you're thinking of going to get some gear, you better be really sure you know what you're doing and that potential benefits outweigh the risks.