Milan, 28 June 2024 – Investigators have reconstructed 151 shipments that left from Rome throughout 2023 and 43 in Milan from December 2023 to the last few days. Estimated earnings: 130 thousand euros. In reality, the business that revolved around the illegal trafficking of anabolics would have earned much more money, if it is true that in an interception one of the seven arrested, the 26 year old body builder from Bolzano Manuel Peerhe revealed to a buyer that he handled “60 shipments” every day.
The illicit business was dismantled at dawn yesterday by the Carabinieri of the Nas of Trento: six of them ended up in jail, while the seventh suspect (the only woman) was placed under house arrest. During the searches, the military discovered a warehouse in the shadow of the Madonnina with more than 2 thousand packages of prohibited products to inflate the muscles to an enormous extent.
The revealing disease
The report that triggered the investigation came last summer from a doctor at the hospital in Bolzano, who reported that liver tumors diagnosed in two young bodybuilders from South Tyrol; that type of pathology, according to the scientific literature, “is closely linked to the use of anabolic/doping substances“.
What’s more: the clinical tests carried out to identify the reasons for a liver inflammation suffered by another boy reveal the intake of oxandrolone and testosterone.
What do the three have in common? They are members of the same gym in Bolzanoalso frequented by PeerThe hounds of the Arma immediately focus on the personal trainer, and in a short time they discover that it is him to manage traffic: collects orders from customers, finds the substances, arranges “that shipments take place directly in the customer’s name or as a hold to evade any checks”, communicates the time and date of arrival of the bottles and updates dosages and methods of administration.
The guide to doping
Peer follows the users step by step, explaining how to store tablets and containers (“No no, no fridge… room temperature ok?”) and inviting the interlocutors to constantly undergo blood tests (“We have to keep an eye on this thing, you can’t take a break and then start again because your health is at stake”).
Until December 2023, the parcels will always leave from Rome, managed by Mongi Boujnah and Martha Bernardi with the complicity of the manager of an Mbe shop Fabrizio Di Gravio, but the serial seizures by the Carabinieri push the organizers to prefer Milan as the starting point for shipments from the end of 2023.
Supplies from Milan
It is at this stage that the NAS come across Peer’s alleged supplier, the body builder Daniele Ponzoni, twenty-eight years old from Sesto San Giovanni. He is always there, we read in the precautionary custody order signed by investigating judge Elsa Vesco, behind the parcels that leave from the Mbe stores in viale Sarca in Milan and in via Cardinal Ferrari in Sesto with fictitious names (Mauro Antoniazzi and Paolo Fontolan) and arrive in the warehouses of other couriers in Bolzano.
“Something like this is out of the ordinary, buddy! I’m not well organized yet to have a nice big warehouse. Too much stuff!”, Ponzoni says when intercepted on February 6, 2024, evidently struggling with a surplus of requests. In reality, a warehouse does exist, according to the investigators’ checks: it is located in the twenty-five-year-old’s home Fabio Pasquale Rocco, in Sesto. According to what emerged from the investigations, it is he who starts the shipments: he does not go to the shop in person, but leaves the quantity for someone else behind a column in the building where he lives.
Traffic on Telegram
On Telegram he calls himself “King”, while Ponzoni and his partner Mirko Zacchetti hide behind the nicknames “Shambala” and “Prophet” respectively. They are real estate agents, but the military does not know that they earn income from the home rental business. And yet Ponzoni has a “very high” standard of living: “he dines out every day, pays the rent of the apartment where he lives, is the owner of the utilities of various apartments that he manages as a B&B, and does various types of shopping”.
E the photos posted on social media immortalize him in the Caribbean in July 2023. For the judge, “this lifestyle is justified in light of the significant profits he derives from the illicit trade in doping/anabolic and narcotic substances”.
