News out of Sydney, Australia is that a former professional and competitive bodybuilder/personal trainer made claims that the only reason he sold illegal anabolic steroids to his clients is because he needed to gain a competitive advantage in the world of fitness and was afraid that if he didn’t sell these products he’d lose business.
James William Blatch was finally sentenced in Australian criminal court after and undercover investigation and sting operation was conducted all the way back in 2015.
After an anonymous tip came in claiming that Blatch was selling anabolic steroids on the sly as part of his personal training services, New South Wales undercover police officers decided to pose as potential clients to see if there was any legitimacy to these rumors.
An undercover NSW Police operative pretended to be interested in taking advantage of the personal training services Blatch offered through his Anytime Fitness operation. The undercover operative went through the initial consultation and a handful of different core training programs, and once he was able to establish himself as a long-term client with Blatch he asked about potentially purchasing anabolic steroids that are known as “British Knights”.
The undercover officer reported that Blatch was eager to sound these steroid, and conducted three different transactions between May 28 of 2015 and June 10 of 2015. More than $7000 worth of anabolic steroids were sold by Blatch during these three transactions, a fact that Blatch has never tried to distance himself from or to disagree with.
In fact, during the court proceedings against Blatch he was both open and honest about his history selling these anabolic steroids and very forthcoming with why he decided to go down this pathway in the first place. He admitted that he understood what he did was against the law, but he was terrified of losing clients that warrant seeing results as quickly as they expected to other personal trainers and wanted to offer these as supplemental services as a competitive advantage.
The forthright nature of these admission may have been enough to sway the judge presiding over this case to allow Blatch to serve no prison time as part of his sentence. Instead, Blatch was given two years of community service and was mandated to pay a $1000 fine. Still a pretty stiff penalty, but nowhere near the kind of jail time that a lot of first time anabolic steroid peddlers see when they go before the Australian justice system.