Accused detective ‘dealt in illegal steroids’

The prosecution claim Nicholas McFadden corruptly helped himself to heroin, cocaine, cannabis and amphetamine which had been seized while he was a constable with the Organised Crime Group in West Yorkshire and then with his brother Simon plotted to put them back on to the streets.

McFadden denies that and told Leeds Crown Court yesterday he had got into steroids through weight training at gyms.

He said he started by taking legal substances such as whey protein and ephedrone-based supplements more usually known as fat burners and was still doing so until his arrest in 2011.

“Did you take anything else in addition to the legal substances to assist in your weight training?” asked his barrister Alistair MacDonald QC.

“Over the years I have done, yes,” replied McFadden. He said he had first taken steroids at 17 after that his usage varied sometimes only once a year, sometimes two or three times a year which had not been supplied legally under medical supervision.

He told the jury when his wife Clare was expecting their daughter, who was born in January 2008, he began to worry about how they would cope financially and as he had been asked about supplying proteins and legal powders in the past, decided to start doing so as a way of getting some extra money.

As a result, he was making a few hundred pounds a month from that in what was quite a “niche market”.

He was then asked about supplying steroids as well.

He said his usual supplier introduced him to a man in Goole and he began to get steroids in the form of tablets and oil from him.

By 2010, the orders could vary from £500 to £9,000 or £10,000.

“There was two to three people I was involved with who did order a lot on a regular basis,” he said.

His brother helped him initially with the supplements and then later with the steroids, he added.

“By the end of 2010, how was the steroid business going?” asked Mr MacDonald.

“For want of a better phrase it was flourishing, busy,” said McFadden.

He told the jury text messages recovered from phones seized at his brother’s home referred to trading in supplements and later of steroids not other drugs.

When the message referred on one occasion in November 2010 to a question “is that for solid or lion” it related to the difference between tablet forms of steroids or high quality oils.

He agreed solid could also refer in street terms to cannabis resin in blocks but said he had never heard of lion as cannabis bush, as a detective had suggested in evidence last week.

He said lion in steroid terms meant good quality oils, not some cheap import from China.

Asked if his wife had ever known about his dealing in steroids, McFadden shook his head. He said he had also bought two boxes of human growth hormones to test but had never done so.

McFadden, 38, then of Pasture Drive, Castleford, denies four charges of theft and four of conspiracy to supply the drugs. He has admitted one charge of money laundering.

His brother Simon, 41, of Darfield Place, Harehills, Leeds, denies four charges of conspiring to supply drugs and one of money laundering.

The trial continues.