2 Charged in Illegal Drug Sales

Two Long Island men have been charged with using the Internet to illegally sell a smorgasbord of drugs, including ecstasy, steroids and the weight-loss chemical DNP, according to officials.

Jason Sacks, 25, of 359 Blacksmith Rd., Levittown, was arraigned yesterday in U.S. District Court in Central Islip on charges of distributing controlled and regulated drugs.

The other man, Matthew Cahill, 27, of 864 Merrick Ave., East Meadow, was arraigned on the same charges Friday in the same court.

Agents of the Postal Inspection Service and the Food and Drug Administration began an investigation of the two in June. Back then, clerks at the Hicksville post office found that a package that had broken open contained what turned out to be vials of injectable steroids and hypodermic needles, according to federal prosecutors Wayne Baker and Leonard Lato. The package had been mailed by a man who had previously sent numerous similar packages and who claimed to be selling Hot Wheels over the Internet, the prosecutors said.

Although the person who had mailed the package had used a pseudonym, an investigation found that Sacks and Cahill were selling at least $30,000-a-month worth of the various drugs from an Internet site called designerlabs.com, officials said. The drugs had apparently been obtained overseas. At one point, agents, using an undercover mailing address, ordered and received 50 capsules of DNP from the site for $55, officials said. DNP, or dinitrophenol, is popular among bodybuilders for weight loss, but has been banned because of its serious side effects, which can lead to death.

Both Sacks' attorney, Dennis Lemke of Mineola, and Cahill's attorney, federal public defender Tracey Gaffey, declined to comment.

Both Cahill and Sacks face up to 5 years in prison if convicted of the charges.

In a separate case, an Indiana man, who is awaiting sentencing, was convicted in June of selling the DNP that caused the death in 2001 of Eric Perrin, a bodybuilder from Baldwin.