Dad and son’s St Asaph steroid lab undone by dog grooming shop

“The first time I took steroids, I was with my brother. It was in my bedroom. I must have been 14, maybe just turning 15.”

Macaulay Dodd was an angry, mixed-up teenage boy reeling from the break-up of his parents’ marriage and desperately looking to his gym-going older brother and friends for guidance on how to weather the path to adulthood.

As he plunged that needle into his buttock for the first time, he could not have known that within a few short years he would be at the heart of one of the UK’s biggest illegal steroid gangs and would be the one cooking up drugs to the tune of £1.2m.

His story is revealed in BBC series Confessions of a Steroid Gang, which documents the rise and fall of a drugs operation run by Macaulay and his dad, Andrew Dodd, and undone, in part, by a dog grooming shop they set up to launder all the cash they were making.

Andrew says, at the time, he did not class himself as a criminal. Yet the pair took significant steps to cover up their activities from police and those who knew them.

Reflecting on the enterprise a decade on from his arrest, he acknowledged it “wasn’t right” and he would “never do it again”.

Andrew Dodd was a cockle fisher on the Dee estuary – a hard, physical job he had seen “break men”.

He was now raising his two sons on his own after a divorce and his relationship with his son Macaulay left a lot to be desired, whom he felt was “angry, rebellious, hard to live with”.

Looking to “try and make up” for what his children didn’t have, he took an interest in a man down the pub who seemed to have it all – nice clothes and money to flash around.

Andrew wanted to know how he did it: “I’m in the steroid business.”

These words changed his life.

Andrew had no idea how many people – up to 1.5 million in the UK – were using steroids.

Macaulay, now 18, had just left the family home in Deeside and was living out of his car.

Andrew was worried about him so called him and said he had some work.

He explained: “Who do you trust more than your son?”

When Macaulay was told he would be setting up a steroid manufacturing lab, he was taken aback.

“He’s never really been in trouble before,” he said.

The law around anabolic steroids is not straightforward.

They are a Class C drug, but there is an exemption that makes it legal to have them for personal use.

The maximum penalty for supplying or producing them is 14 years in prison or an unlimited fine.

The father and son could not operate out of Deeside where “everybody sort of knows each other”.

So they moved 20 miles to the cathedral city of St Asaph and found a remote farmhouse, transforming the outhouse into a steroid lab.

Next came importing the raw ingredients, mainly synthetic testosterone, which is nearly all produced legally abroad.

Andrew formed a network of members of the public who would accept parcels without asking questions.

Macaulay is brutally honest: “People need easy money…. As bad as it sounds, people in need, you use them don’t you?”

The pair followed instructions from their contact in the pub but there were dangers in the process of making them.

“You’re basically inhaling drugs,” said Andrew.

“Looking back I was getting a bit angry. Maybe I was taking more steroids than a lot more of my customers.”

Now they had to sell them.

Making contact through their pub fixer, now Andrew’s business partner, they began selling their product, named Renvex, to online dealers.

Dr Honor Doro Townshend, steroid researcher and criminologist, said: “Buying steroids online is pretty much as easy as buying clothes online… you choose your product and your quantity of product and it’s sent to your house.”

You can still read glowing 12-year-old reviews of Renvex on a popular steroid forum.

What started out as a sideline became “a full-time job”.

But with more orders came more need for ingredients – that meant an increase in parcels coming through customs.

To launder the increasing amounts of money pouring in, Andrew set up a dog grooming service named Posh Paws in Ruthin, but time was running out for the pair.

Supt Lee Boycott was the senior investigating officer on Operation Fasti, set up after the Border Agency intercepted some of the parcels.

“Because a lot were heading to residential addresses in the north Wales area, they picked up the phone and referred the case to us,” he said.

A police analyst spotted a pattern of deliveries to homes across north Wales.

Andrew said: “I didn’t really class myself as a criminal. I’d just seen myself as a business owner.”

A visit by police to one of those accepting parcels meant Andrew had to come clean, but asked him to stay quiet if the authorities came calling.

“There was a point where I realised I wasn’t liking myself and who I’d become,” he said.

Orders were increasingly getting intercepted and online feedback from customers turned negative as orders weren’t filled.

In London, police uncovered a large quantity of steroids in a flat belonging to online dealer Terence Murrell.

One of his main suppliers? Renvex.

Meanwhile, Andrew and Macaulay found an overseas supplier who agreed to disguise the steroids in sweet packaging, with Andrew even opening a sweetshop as cover.

But, courtesy of documents found at Murrell’s home, police found a payment to a dog grooming business in Ruthin.

Other pieces started falling into place.

The people receiving the parcels communicated with Andrew on their own phones, rather than “burner” phones – unregistered disposable phones which are harder to trace – favoured by criminals.

Andrew’s name was on all their logs.

Police found an address and filmed Andrew taking bags of rubbish filled with drug-making waste to the tip.

It was time to swoop.

Andrew and Macaulay were arrested in a dawn raid and police finally uncovered the lab at the centre of the million-pound operation.

“This might sound strange to hear but it was almost like a relief at the time,” remembers Andrew. “

“You’re not lying, you’re not deceiving your family, your friends. It just feels like it’s over, it’s done.

It emerged that their original contact in the pub, who became Andrew’s business partner, was already on bail for another failed steroids operation.

Three years after their arrests, in 2018, they were both sentenced to five years in prison for running the estimated £1.2m operation.

Prison was to prove transformative for their relationship – Andrew asked if he and Macaulay, now 23, could be housed in a cell together.

“I feel like the minute we got into the cell it was just this bond of sticking together and we’re a team and we’ve got each other,” he said.

“Jail definitely saved our relationship,” added Macaulay.

Prison saw an enforced, but permanent, withdrawal from steroids for Macaulay and changed his father’s outlook.

Andrew said: “I’ve paid for what I’ve done. It wasn’t right, I know that and I’d never do it again.”

Anabolic steroids are prescription-only medicines that are sometimes taken without medical advice to increase muscle mass and improve athletic performance, which can cause serious side effects and addiction.

They mimic the effects of the hormone testosterone and are not the same as corticosteroids, a different type of steroid drug more commonly prescribed.

Personal use of the Class C drug is legal, and they can be issued by pharmacists with a prescription.

But it is illegal to possess, import or export anabolic steroids if it is believed you’re supplying or selling them – as in the case of Macaulay and Andrew Dodd.

Posting or delivering the drugs by a courier or freight service is also illegal.

Anabolic steroids are usually injected into a muscle or taken by mouth as tablets, but they also come as creams or gels.

Side effects of their use by men can include, but are not limited to: reduced sperm count; erectile dysfunction; hair loss; and increased risk of prostate cancer.

Both men and women taking the drugs can experience side effects including: heart attack; stroke; severe acne; liver or kidney problems or failure; high blood pressure; and blood clots.

In addition, there are several psychological and emotional effects linked to the drugs, including aggressive behaviour; mood swings; paranoia; manic behaviour; and hallucinations and delusions.

Source: NHS

• Confessions of a Steroid Gang, BBC One Wales at 21:00 BST on 12 August, then on iPlayer