The shameless ‘steroid narcos’ making millions as UK flooded with dangerous drugs cooked up in DIY underground labs

WHEN Cameron Rose was found dead in his bed, his loyal husky dog Bailey lying beside him, his parents were mystified.

At just 23, he was fit and healthy and had even taken up weight training with friends after a bout of feeling low.

But the electrical sales assistant - described by his family as “full of life, full of laughter” - was hiding a sinister secret.

Cameron had been taking anabolic steroids and the drugs cost his life after his heart began to beat irregularly, then abruptly stopped.

Mum Morag, 50, told The Sun: “You assume these are drugs just taken by athletes or bodybuilders, not teenagers.

“We were happy when Cameron started weight training because he'd been suffering a little bit with his mental health and the exercise seemed to lift his mood.

“As far as we were aware, there was nothing untoward going on. I sometimes had to clean his room and found nothing to ever make me suspicious.

“We just had no idea.”

Cameron, who died at his home in Loudwater, Bucks, in May 2022, had been taking the drugs for just three months.

Today Morag and husband Lawrence told how they were abused online trying to warn others about the dangers of steroids, which are now taken by up to one million Brits.

Bodybuilders revealed to The Sun that use of the drug is so widespread that there are “three or four” dealers in almost every gym across the UK.

The most unscrupulous can rake in up to £10,000 a day selling ‘roids’ made in dirty underground DIY laboratories - while flashy gangs who import ‘juice’ are making millions.

In a sign of just how lucrative the illegal steroids trade has become, a Brit who was part of a gang manufacturing steroids was last month told to stump up £9.8million under the proceeds of crime act.

His accomplices lived in luxury homes and drove expensive sports cars.

Secret underground labs

Tory MP Luke Evans fears Britain is “sleeping walking” into a steroid crisis he dubs "bigorexia". 

He will meet with experts, researchers and cops at Westminster next month to assess the scale of the problem in the first steps to tackle the country’s steroid problem.

Experts believe young men are turning to steroids as they feel increased pressure to look like Instagram and reality TV stars.

Love Island star Tom Powell last year told how his addiction to steroids forced him to get breast surgery - but at the time said he had no plans to quit the drug.

The 31-year-old live-streamed his surgery for gynecomastia, a condition linked to steroid use which causes hormone changes and makes male breasts swell.

Just days after surgery, he told OK! Magazine that he had no plans to stop the dangerous habit.

He said: “I don’t take drugs. I’m not a party animal. So steroids are sort of my poison - the benefits I get from it are so much healthier than me going out.”

In 2015, Made In Chelsea star Spencer Matthews was famously forced to leave the I’m A Celebrity jungle after it was revealed he had been taking steroid-based medication to "bulk up for a charity boxing match".

Spencer, 35, later admitted he thought the recreational use of steroids was ";fine" because it was "very worryingly" so readily available.

Cameron’s parents were trolled after trying to warn other men about steroid use and mum Morag believes it’s because steroids have become so mainstream over the decades.

She said: “I was trying to help others, but if I said my son had passed away from taking steroids, I would get a lot of abuse.

"It was very aggressive with people saying Cameron didn’t know what he was doing, that he was an idiot and that people don’t die from taking them.

“Cameron had been suffering from poor mental health and we believe he used steroids to make himself feel stronger, more in control and better about himself.

“There are so many young men who see reality TV and Instagram stars bulked up and want to look the same.”

Dad Lawrence, 56, warned: “You can speak to hundreds of bodybuilders out there and they’ll all say ‘you’re fine if you know what you’re doing.

“However, not everyone is the same. You will get someone who has a bad reaction to it all.”

A coroner ruled Cameron’s death as “misadventure” due to sudden cardiac death "in the context of anabolic-androgenic steroid abuse".

He is not the only Brit to die from steroid use, which often involves ‘cycling’ - a process of coming on and off the performance-enhancing drugs.

Mr England runner-up Ben Harnett, 37, of Northumberland, died after taking steroids before a bodybuilding event in 2019. 

He had been married less than a year and had a five-month-old baby girl.

Rugby player Freddie Dibben, 28, of Ringwood, Hampshire, died in 2017 when his heart became enlarged after using ‘juice’ he bought from a website based in Turkey.

Matt Dear, a 17-year-old cadet from Southend, Essex, died in 2009 after taking the drugs in a bid to get into the Marines. 

He suffered fatal swelling to the brain when he tried a £30 black market batch of pills. 

Anabolic steroids are class C drugs which should only be issued under prescription.

They are illegal to import or export - yet a quick check shows they can be bought from firms around the world, mainly in India.

In Britain, dealers brew their own steroids in DIY underground labs with amateur chemists making thousands of pounds a day.

In 2016, fitness fanatic Brett Wiltshire -  one of the first Brits to be convicted of revenge porn - was jailed for two years for making and selling pills embossed with a superman logo. 

Wiltshire, then 40, turned liquid steroids into pills at his flat in Maidstone, Kent, and he boasted in text messages of making £10,000 in a day.

One bodybuilder told us: “There are thousands of underground labs that pop up across Britain.  

“They are virtually giving away 10ml bottles of testosterone at between £9 and £12. The same amount from a genuine lab selling pure stuff is between £45 and £60.

“Who knows what’s going into the cheaper stuff and that’s a major problem”

The fitness expert, who gives advice on TikTok but asked for his name not to be used, said youngsters are using a super potent steroid called Trenbolone. 

He said: “I’m 30 and started taking steroids when I was 16.

“I try to give information from a harm reduction point of view and I'm careful not to try and glamorise steroid use.

“I’ve got kids sending me messages saying 'I’m taking this amount’ and it would be like four times the amount I regularly take after years of use.

“Trenbalone is especially worrying because it’s so potent and gives a crazy look. It was originally given to cattle to bulk them up. It’s a very nasty pill which can make users very aggressive.

“It comes from cattle pellets and DIY labs are cooking it in oil and grounding it down to powder.”

The bodybuilder claimed steroids have their “place in competition prep” among bodybuilders, saying “it’s like the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae”.

But he added: “We are living in a time when steroids are ‘cool’ and everyone wants to get that Love Island buff look, but there’s no education or information around taking them safely. 

“We’re facing an epidemic of people taking them due to shows like Love Island and kids are getting their advice from dealers - the very people who will encourage them to take more to make cash.”

Another bodybuilder told The Sun: “You can go to any gym up and down the country and there will be three or four dealers offering roids. It’s insane.”

Luxury homes and cars

Gangs are raking in a fortune from illegal labs, with many brewing up "juice" in bathtubs.

Danish national Jacob Sporon-Fielder ran an Indian pharmaceutical firm which supplied four tonnes of anabolic steroids every month to Europe.

His gang in the UK included ex-bodybuilding champion Nathan Selcon who had a £1million house in Milton Keynes and drove a fleet of expensive vehicles, including a Ferrari and a Range Rover.

The pair admitted conspiracy to import steroids at the Old Bailey in 2019 and Sporon-Fielder, 42, was jailed for five years and four months.

Selcon was also found guilty of conspiring to manufacture steroids and was given six years.

Gang member Mohammed Afzal, 39, of Slough, was jailed for two years for helping set up their DIY lab near Heathrow airport.

In November he was ordered to pay £9.8million by the National Crime Agency under the proceeds of crime act, including £7.5million in cryptocurrency, a share in property in Berkshire and London worth around £1million and a Mercedes GLS SUV.

Another accomplice Alexander MacGregor, of Maidenhead, was told to pay £1.1 million.

He owned a Porsche, a Ferrari 485, a Mercedes G Wagon, two Beretta shotguns and several expensive watches.

He was jailed for 17 months for conspiring to produce class C drugs in 2020.

Body dysmorphia

Another dealer dubbed "Mr Potato Chest" was last year told to pay back £30,000 for selling steroids.

Terry Murrell was a leading member of a £2million roid gang but fled to Bali in 2018 where he taunted police with pictures of his playboy lifestyle on social media.

He posed for pictures in an infinity pool, working out in a gym and using his laptop in a four-poster bed with many snaps captioned: "Boss life".

He was given his strange nickname after a garbled police wanted appeal that said he had "potatoes on his chest".

Murrell, a male model, was eventually extradited back to the UK in 2020 to start a 37-month sentence after admitting selling class C drugs through websites.

MP Evans, who is also a GP, said while cocaine is recognised as a major problem in Britain the steroid market could be even bigger.

He said “Data suggests a third of gym users have seen people using it.

“The difficulty is that people who take steroids don’t see themselves as drug users because they look good and think they are healthy, they tend to watch what they eat and don’t drink or do other drugs.

“As a GP, I know the obesity epidemic has been a real issue, but part of the nation is actually getting fitter while part is getting fatter. We know that of those who go to the gym, one in ten - mainly men - suffer from bigorexia.

“It’s a form of body dysmorphia - the idea that someone’s muscles are not big enough. We talk a lot about female body image but I think we need to focus on young men too.

“The first step is finding out how big the problem really is and then start a conversation about what to do about it.”