Ryan Shooltz, a former anabolic steroids dealer, is hoping that U.S. District Judge Michael A. Ponsor will consider being more lenient towards his case. Shooltz was involved in an unfortunate incident back in 2004 when one of his friends died of methadone overdose in his Amherst apartment. At that time, police managed to seize several doses of anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, and other pills from his residences. It became a debate on whether the drugs confiscated were for business or just personal use.

From The Republican:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Regan told Ponsor Shooltz had a “cornucopia” of substances in his refrigerator and elsewhere and had cultivated an environment tolerant of drug use.

“This wasn’t a small case of a student who wanted to pump iron and … share steroids with his friends,” O’Regan said, adding that Shooltz imported raw steroid powder from China and sold  steroids over the Internet.

Lesser argued that although the pills were plentiful, they were really just enough for personal use by a half-dozen people.

“If you’re going to use steroids, you use 20 to 30 pills a day for a three-month course,” Lesser said, later focusing on Shooltz’s lack of a criminal record after a series of arrests in his late teens.

Shooltz, who pleaded guilty last October, told federal judge Ponsor that he has been a changed man since the event several years ago. Ponsor admitted to Thomas Lesser, the defense lawyer, that he was biased against Shooltz during the hearing. Since 2004, Shooltz has reinvented himself and now has a lucrative job, his own apartment, and a long-term girlfriend. Lesser also reasoned that Shooltz has had a clean criminal record since then.

For now, Ponsor is considering sentencing Shooltz to community confinement for six months. He had told defense to compile draft letters in support of Shooltz, something that he was expecting but was not done, so that he can review if the man had really changed. Ponsor is known for rarely giving second chances to defendants so that they can gather support.