The plot of the Spanish nurse and the Serbian trafficker: EPO for 'neighborhood athletes' in middle Europe

He first surplused in the dilisis hospital where he worked; the second sells them in seven passes. Athletes of 60 years and much amateur neighborhood bought their doses at 200-300 euros

• Civil Guard.
  

  They break up an organization that traded with EPO for athletes
  

Between a Spanish nurse and a Serbian trafficker they had one of the largest networks of illegal EPO sales in Europe. The first acted from the Cdiz private hospital specialized in patients with dilisis where he worked, and the second was responsible for logistics and international sales from Barcelona.

Thus, between Cdiz and Barcelona they had set up a business that had been operating as minimum 10 years, as he has discovered the UCO of the Civil Guard. This discovery came about thanks to the fact that one of the websites of the band specialized in illegal sale of EPO had already appeared in an investigation of 10 years ago: the call Master operation. This new research has been called Hypoxianet operation, in which in addition to these two, there are four others investigated.

At that time it was impossible to open a solid investigation because the only data was that a website with the server hosted in Iceland He was selling EPO. However, this information remained in the Civil Guard archives awaiting new clues. stas arrived in 2017 from the hand of the Spanish Anti-Doping Agency, that he had previously received in his mailbox of denunciations very recent information on this business controlled by the Serbian and the nurse.

A round business: on average, they took 250 euros for each dose sold Let it be known, thanks to the inspections of the Andaluca Board In the Cdiz clinic, those investigated have been able to sell at least 5,000 doses only in the last three years. At that rate, it is estimated that they have sold more than 15,000 in the decade they have been acting. Now they caught 850, stuck in a storage room in poor condition.

The nurse was fundamental to the network: in dilysis clinics, patients are given EPO as part of the treatment. And the nurse, who was in charge of ordering supplies, peda surplus behind their bosses to sell it on the Serbian-controlled network. Among the destinations where they sell, apart from Spain, They were Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, Turkey Y Greece. And the price of a dose of the highest quality, 350 euros. National sales were managed by the nurse, and international by Serbian.

The success of this network was based on the fact that the requests made by the nurse were totally legal, that is, of medicines from accredited and always sold pharmacists within the expiration period relevant. The steps to get a dose will be the following: first, the interested party writes or calls a telephone number that appears on the various websites. From ah, receive instructions to enter the money in an account that could be in Austria, in Slovakia or in Cyprus. Sometimes, even the payment is required in bitcoins to make it difficult for him to follow the trail. A tremendous profit: they have already requisitioned more than 800,000 euros.

The doses sold may be of different types, depending on the concentration they had, and that could range from a concentration of 1,000 international units (u.i.) or reach 10,000. The first are sold for about 200 euros, and the latter, the most powerful at a price of between 300 and 350 euros the dose. The band even offered the opportunity to make a first trial order selling for 100 euros a dose of 1000 u.i.

Who were the recipients? People of all kinds, but among them, and that attracts the attention of researchers, A lot of neighborhood sportsman. That is, people who do not compete at a professional level but in popular races at even the neighborhood level, we say.

Another detail, as sources of the case explained to this newspaper, was the profile of the buyers: customers over 60 years old, of the categories called Master 60, although also of category Master 20, Master 30 or Master 40 And in some cases there were athletes from official federations, even a few former members of the national team in their various specialties. The same sources stressed that there is no known athlete among the buyers that are known to date.

The sports disciplines of the clients of this network were varied: athletes, triathletes, cyclists or motocross riders, among others. The agents emphasize that the great danger of this medicine is that while it helps to produce many more red blood cells, and therefore to carry more oxygen in the blood and get less tired, the hematocrit level rises until it can touch dangerous situations if not There is strict medical control.

Something that unites all customers is that, despite doping, they performed sports and had a diet of athletes, because the EPO works, researchers emphasize, but it has to be accompanied by sports training. Nevertheless, performance can rise quietly 30% without even consuming detectable doses in the anti-doping controls, so for those who participated in those neighborhood races Where control is never done, it is possible that its performance would have increased a lot more.