Four FBI Agents Arrested in Steroid, Human Growth Hormone Scandal
Posted: Monday, November 15th, 2010 at 9:26 am
Four employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigations have been charged with lying about their use of steroids and human growth hormone (HGH), announced officials.
Three of the accused employees are agents of the FBI, while one is an investigative analyst. All four live in Northern Virginia, and all allegedly made false statements during annual fitness reports. The FBI requires disclosure of performance-enhancing drugs on the reports to the bureau, but the four employees in question allegedly omitted any reference to steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.
According to court documents, Katia Litton, 42, a special agent with the Washington Field Office, and her husband Matthew Litton, 39, both used steroids and HGH. Litton is a former bodybuilder who has been with the FBI since 2003; her husband, who has been an agent with the Critical Incident Response Team since 2001, is described in his FBI medical file as “5’8” and 190 lbs.” and “muscular.”
Also charged in the case are Special Agent James Barnett, 42, who is also associated with the Washington Field Office, and Ali Sawan, a 45-year-old counterterrorism analyst. Each of the accused FBI employees appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson on Wednesday as charges were unsealed against them in U.S. District Court in Washington. They were not allowed to make any statements in their defense.
Barnett, of Alexandria; Sawan, of Sterling; and the Littons, of McLean, were required to submit to a drug test, to relinquish their passports and weapons, and to remain within 50 miles of their homes. They were released on their own recognizance, pending a hearing that is scheduled for October 5.
The four agents are alleged to have been diagnosed with pituitary dwarfism and other conditions, and to have received prescriptions for medications that included anabolic steroids and human growth hormones, which are used to increase muscle mass and reduce recovery time after workouts. According to an arrest affidavit filed in the cases of the Littons and Sawan, by Special Agent J. Brian Burnett of the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General, each worked with a part-time emergency room doctor who had a side business advertising “hormone modulation therapy” to address issues including “adult onset growth hormone deficiency” and “adult onset testosterone deficiency.”
That doctor, said Burnett, wrote more than 5,200 prescriptions for anabolic steroids in a nearly five-year period, September 2005 and January 2010.
Another physician, a board-certified gynecologist, may also have been involved.
The Littons are said to have spent at least $17,000 over four years to obtain the steroids and HGH, while investigators discovered that Sawan made some 90 purchases from his doctor’s office and from local pharmacies, between November 2007 and January 2010. Barnett is similarly said to have “omitted any mention of his use of HGH and/or anabolic steroids,” according to court documents, and to have spent more than $10,000 in the acquisition of the drugs.
All of the agents are charged with attesting to materially false statements on U.S. government documents.
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