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drugs Counterfeit Corner

In this country steroids are cheap, and easilypurchased without prescription. Turkeyhas a lot of small mom-and-pop pharma-cies where the individual bodybuilder canpick and choose his or her cycle in peace, allthe while being served by a friendly phar-macist who is very happy to have discoveredthis new source of income. To spite its lessthan bountiful market, Turkey is definitelya steroid vacationer’s paradise.

The fame of Turkish Primobolan hasbeen spreading. What most people do notknow, however, is that Turkey has a limitedlicense to produce this drug. They are onlyallowed to manufacture and sell a certainnumber of doses each year. This makes theTurkish Primo pipeline a tightly controlledone, and most certainly limited in supply. Inthe Turkish drug system in general, onefinds there is no room for big smugglers andwholesalers that want to buy steroids inbulk. Once large-scale dealers started sourc-ing drugs here, they quickly realized that thedemand for Turkish steroids, in particular

Sustanon and Primobolan, has outgrowntheir availability. The first counterfeits cameon the market soon after. For those who fol-low and buy these items, they will clearly seethat the same scammers that have counter-feited large quantities of Spanish Primoare now counterfeiting the Turkish productas well. You find the same mistakes anddeviations on both, which we will showlater in this article. The sheer abundance ofTurkish Primobolan on the black marketthese days compels us to take a closer lookat this steroid, particularly the ins and outsof how to protect oneself from counter-feits. As is usually the case, the more popu-lar a steroid is, the more counterfeits of ityou are going to see.

I think the best way to ensure you’llknow real Turkish Primobolan when yousee it is to show you a number of real vs. fakecomparisons. It is in pointing out the mis-takes made by the various counterfeitoperations that we learn the intricacies ofthis steroid. Let’s kick this off by taking a

look at one of the most infamous of allTurkish Primo counterfeits: Lot# 11081A(image 1, left). This product was firstbrought to our attention by a group of read-ers in Europe, who were very concernedby the excellent appearance and poor resultsof this steroid. We did a little research, andfound that this batch was being sold insuch large quantities, and for prices so low,that it just couldn’t be real Schering Pri-mobolan. We decided to step in and send afew ampules of this hotly debated steroid tothe lab, to find out exactly what was in it.

Laboratory analysis showed not onlythat this product was devoid ofmethenolone enanthate, but it actually hadno steroidal constituent in it at all. I guessthis counterfeiting operation went to such

expense duplicating the ampule to exactingdetail that they had no money left to fill itwith steroid. Make no mistake; this fakelooks so good that it can be easily mis-taken for the real thing, and highlights thetechnology of today’s counterfeiters. Thisfake has also been produced in such highvolume that it is showing up all over theworld now, so everyone should be aware ofit.Without having a box and insert to exam-ine, there are only a few traits that make thissteroid stand out. The cosmetic differencesare so slight that you really need to knowwhat you are looking for to spot them, andinclude lighter and thinner text on the fake,and the rings that are less vibrant in colourthat the real ampule (image 1, right). Thistype of situation demonstrates the need tobuy Primobolan only when it is in a boxwith paperwork. Although this doesn’t

A Pile of Valuable“Souvenirs” from Turkey

Turkish Primobolan Depot…

BY RONNY TOBER Due to the high prevalence of counterfeit

Spanish Primobolan on the black market, and the increasing price and

limited availability of real Primobolan ampules, a good number of

European bodybuilders are making it a point to vacation in Turkey these

days, one of the few remaining reliable sources for real Schering “Primo”.

The morepopular

a steroid is,the more

counterfeits of it you are going to see.

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assure a legitimate purchase, it gives us a lotmore to look at.

It should be understood that any dis-cussion about Turkish Primo is not com-plete without including a look at both thenewer and old style ampules. Just like withthe Spanish amps, the older (before March2000) Turkish Primobolan had the letteringprinted directly on the glass (no label).Around this time, Schering was packag-ing Primobolan in brown glass ampuleswith green lettering too in certain countries(like Spain and Mexico), while in others(including Greece and Turkey) they weremade of clear glass with green lettering.Since counterfeiters had already invested induplicating the clear glass ampules of Turk-ish Primo, they continued to produce itafter March of 2000, when the new paperlabels were introduced. Image 2 shows whatthe real older Turkish amp looks like. Notethat at this time any Turkish Primobolanproduct looking like this is likely to be afake.

Let’s move over to examining the num-bers for a minute. Pharmaceutical compa-nies are not random with the batchnumbers and expiration dates that they use

on their boxes. There is usually logic tothem, which the average individual will notnotice without studying the product closely.

It is here where the counterfeiters mostoften screw up. When you look to the com-parison picture of the flaps of the Turkish

Primobolan boxes (image 3a), you’ll noticethat the batch numbers start with the pro-duction year (highlighted numbers). Butyou also need to notice that after theappearance of Primobolan changed early2000, all new batch numbers had letters(a, b or c) included at the end. In this pictureyou will see it is the letter “a”. Before mak-ing your next purchase of Turkish Pri-mobolan, it would be wise to take a quickglance at how these digits match up, andthen make sure you look for these lettersafter the batch. Do you remember our infa-mous fake of Primobolan Lot# 11081A?Do you notice in image 3b that the numbersare off on this steroid? It should have beenmanufactured in 2001 with that batch num-ber, not 2000!

As you can see on image 4, this testholds true for the older green letteredampules as well. These ampules shouldhave a batch number that starts with theyear of production, as we have noted withthe current style Primobolan. In the case ofthe ampule in the photo, the batch numberbegins with “9”. This ampule is a perfectcounterfeit. It could have fooled anyone,including us. But it didn’t, because the num-

Counterfeit Corner

1 2 3A 3B 4

8 9A

9B

10

The counterfeitershave adapted the

dates so that they could

continue producingcounterfeit (green)

amps that were not expiring, butnever bothered to change thebatch number.

Counterfeit Corner

the U.S.). The figures on the fake box areclearly divided wrong.

Now it would be a good time to take alook at a couple of leaflets (image 8). Thefirst thing that draws our attention to thefake on the left, again, is the logo. You seeclearly that counterfeiters are having a hardtime reproducing the fine lines in the Scher-ing logo. We also spot some other big mis-takes. For instance, this leaflet has acompletely different layout on both sidescompared to that of the original. The struc-ture, colour and thickness of the papersare different too. This counterfeiter proba-bly used a simple photocopy of the original.It is pretty easy to recognize because copypaper is thicker, stiffer, and whiter than thepaper used to make the real medical leaflet.It shows us again that it is worth the effortof studying all the different parts of a par-ticular steroid’s packing. We came acrossmore deviations during this investigation,but I think you get the general idea.

A pealed off real label shown in com-parison with the used ampule (image 9aand 9b) demonstrates how a label should fiton the glass. The black squares should be

tucked under the serial number and underthe letter P from Primobolan. If it is hard tosee with a new amp, just moisten the labela bit. Also note the batch number and dateon these real labels. The first digit in thebatch always matches the year of produc-tion.

One of the latest fakes fits in perfectly(image 10), because this scammer madethe same mistake on the numbers. Heprinted 2003 as production year (Seri).Note that it should start with the number 3because the manufacture date was in 2003.But it doesn’t, it starts with a 1 instead.Also, the year of production (Imal Ta) isprinted here with too many digits. It is dis-played with the full year as “10.2003”. Onthe original labels the year is always trun-cated, and should have been “10.03”. Besidethat, look at the tiny pieces of paper that arestuck on the rim on the top and bottom ofthe label, like they where printed on rollsand later torn apart. Another trait here,and one that turns up more and more, arethe slightly curved edges of the label. Theedges on real Turkish Primobolan arealways straight. Remember also, by 2003 a

normal “Seri No” should consist of five fig-ures and a letter. This fake only has fivefigures. This counterfeiter missed everydamn thing! Can you say, clumsy?

We showed you the fake box with red lettering from the year 2000 (#040788) earlier, and like you’ve seen for yourself,the amps from this batch were beautiful.Well, it looks like this operation is backagain. They made it easy for us to determinethe fakes this time (image 11, bottom box),because they made even more mistakes onthe new box! The top box in the picture isreal, and included for comparison. Firstoff, of course, is the incorrect red print-ing. Next is the odd batch number, whichstarts with the number 1, but is supposedlymade in the year 2002. They also forgot,again, that there should be a letter behindthe batch number. The fake box also con-tains a small black logo on the inside sideflap (left). The real box on top shows thecorrect (bigger) logo.

With all these examples, you shouldhave the tools to work your way through allthe fake Turkish Primobolan out there.That is, of course, until the counterfeitersread Body of Science. Then, we’ll just haveto start all over again. But I guess that is thewhole sport of what we do here at Body ofScience. Until next time! – RT

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Ronny Tober is Body of Science’s writer from the Netherlands. Although we cannot reveal his true identity, Ronny

is one of William Llewellyn’s regular contributing researchers in the European steroid market. Email your ques-

tions for Ronny to ronny@bodyofscience.com.

10-Pack Anyone?

5B

bers are wrong. If these ampules wheremade in the year 1999, their productionyear (Imal Tarihi) should be 02.99. But ifyou look closely, this ampule was producedin 2002. The counterfeiters have adapted thedates so that they could continue produc-ing counterfeit (green) amps that were notexpiring, but never bothered to change thebatch number. The number of almost per-fectly counterfeited steroids continues torise, and it brings us great worry. If we don’tstay on top of this trend, enormousamounts of counterfeited product will con-tinue to flood the market.

We’ve seen that the batch numbers havean extra letter since the paper labels startedbeing used. If you look at the boxes (image5a) you’ll see that these counterfeiters mistook the “B” for an “8”. Thus the batchnumber is written 040788 instead of04078B. The amps were perfect copies, butthe labels were too small, and possessedrounded corners. Soon everyone knew thatthese were bad counterfeits. On one of thepopular Internet forums I wrote about thisfake, and said that if the scammer had cor-rected the shape of the labels, it would bealmost perfect. They did! As you can see in

image 5b, the rounded corners (right) weresoon replaced by the straight cornered ones(left). The label was made slightly longer aswell, so that it covered the black symbols asit is supposed too. Like they say, a picturecan be worth a thousand words. Image 5cshows a comparison of the real to fakeampules.You will see that the real one on theleft has brighter colours, is smaller, and hasdifferent coloured oil. But aside from this,it is frightening how close this counter-feiter is coming to the real amp. It is alsoscar y to think how many people haveinjected these fake products without know-ing what it contains.

Like I touched on before, a lot of cus-tomers prefer to buy their expensive Pri-mobolan only when it comes in a box witha tray and leaflet. This is a very good idea,as the more extensive packaging ensuresmore chances to notice the potential mis-takes of the counterfeiters. Such mistakescan be seen on the above boxes. The firstthing we can look for are the smaller itemsthat do not scan in on a regular computervery well, like the Schering logo. In thiscase you can see that the real logo on the left(image 6b) has a cut in the ribbon in the

centre, while the fake is a filled in block. Thetext on the fake in general is much lesscrisp, and less detailed. Looking more gen-erally at the box (image 6a), we see thatthe colours, the fonts and the spacing are alloff on the two counterfeits to the right.You’ll also see that on the real box the textis split into three distinct paragraphs. Thetext on each of the fake boxes is found intwo chubby blocks. The box on the rightalso claims to contain 3 amps, while thereal Turkish Primo always contains a traywith one amp only.

When we open these boxes in image 7we find some other remarkable mistakes overlooked by a counterfeiter. First, lookat the characteristic form of the flap of thereal Turkish box on the right. It sits at avery unusual angle. The fake box on theleft has a simple straight flap, just like theSpanish Primobolan boxes. Then there is amajor mistake on the price. In Turkey, thestandard currency is the Lira. These pricesare calculated in millions. The last threefigures in any price tag are almost alwayszero’, because this is too small of a fractionto make a difference (it would be like hav-ing prices specific to fractions of a cent in

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5A 5C 7

11 6A

6B