According to the ARD documentary “Dealer”: German and Danish investigators break up a doping ring and confiscate tons of banned ampoules and tablets. The ARD doping editorial team had previously presented the case of the Danish major dealer Jacob Sporon-Fiedler. He delivered from southern Denmark.
A good four months after the broadcast of the ARD documentary “dealersGerman and Danish investigators report a major success in the fight against illegal trade in doping substances about a Danish major supplier of doping substances based in India. It is based on months of investigations together with the southern Danish police, said the Hamburg Customs Investigation Office, Kiel, this week.
With two accesses in June and July of this year, the investigators managed to secure doping and potency products with a total weight of more than eight tons, one of the largest European search successes in recent years. The investigators estimate the black market value of the goods confiscated by them at more than 11.5 million euros. “This investigation is an excellent example of the importance of international law enforcement cooperation,” the head of the Customs Criminal Police Office, Tino Igelmann, can be quoted as saying: “We pull together with our European partners when it comes to breaking up criminal structures.”
Sporon-Fiedler was convicted in England
Officially, the German customs investigators do not provide the ARD doping editorial team with any information as to whether the access in connection with the ARD research on the documentation “dealers“ around the Danish doping wholesaler Jacob Sporon-Fiedler and his company Alpha Pharma. It is about not endangering the ongoing investigations. However, circles entrusted with the investigation confirmed to the ARD doping editorial team that, according to current knowledge, at least some of the crime complexes are related.
In the film “dealers“, the ARD doping editorial team presented the background and delivery routes of the multi-million dollar business with illegal doping substances at the beginning of April. In the film, undercover research also showed how the major dealer Jacob Sporon-Fiedler, who had already been convicted in England in 2019, apparently immediately resumed the illegal doping trade from Mumbai after his early release from prison. He offered the journalists, who were undercover as German sports managers, the delivery of doping substances worth almost 400,000 euros.
Tons of imports to Europe via Singapore
After consultation, the ARD doping editorial team received a shipment of pharmaceutical doping sample packs via an email address provided by Jacob Sporon-Fiedler’s office from the Danish region of Kolding, processed via a packing station in an antique shop, picked up and delivered by a large parcel service.
Sporon-Fiedler’s Alpha Pharma brand is a popular product in European bodybuilding circles. According to the findings of the ARD doping editorial team, Sporon-Fiedler had the goods produced in India transported by the ton via Singapore to warehouses and to customers in Europe. According to logistics lists available to ARD, Alpha Pharma dispatched more than 400 deliveries between 2018 and 2023, which regularly include classics of anabolic steroid doping such as testosterone enanthate, methenolone enanthate, oxanabol or drostanolone.
Major offensive with 160 officers
The suspected doping drug smugglers and dealers who have now been busted have apparently taken advantage of the open German-Danish border when selling doping and potency drugs illegally imported from third countries. As early as July 13, German customs investigators carried out numerous searches in southern Denmark and northern Germany in an action coordinated by Eurojust with the police of southern Jutland.
In a major police offensive involving a total of 160 officers, the investigators waited until a main suspect in Kolding, southern Denmark, took the illegal funds from a courier and brought them to a camp. During the subsequent access, six people were arrested and two properties in Germany and six properties in Denmark were searched. With success: 1.3 million pieces of sexual enhancers, cash in the five-digit range, large quantities of doping substances and electronic data carriers found their way into the evidence room.
Less than four weeks later, on July 7, the investigators are said to have excavated another camp. Their loot this time: over 780,000 ampoules, more than 3.3 million tablets of doping agents, more than 450,000 tablets of narcotics, more than 580,000 tablets of sexual enhancers, as well as outer packaging, empty ampoules, adhesive labels, leaflets and the like. Now the new traces are evaluated. Sequel follows.