They came with enticing flavor profiles like Strawberry Lemonade, Thizzle Berry and Clown Tears, and they all required FDA approval before being sold to bodybuilders. Some were even marketed as a cure for the unwanted onset of man boobs.
Trouble is, Tyler Jordan Hall, 31, didn’t have that FDA OK to manufacture and sell a variety of bodybuilding supplements including his man boob cure, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Montana claims. But his Kalispell, Montana-based business Rat’s Army marketed and sold a variety of products, including selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs), which can block estrogen in some applications.
In online fitness circles, SERMs are seen as an antidote to male breasts.
Federal prosecutors allege in court documents that from June 2020 through March 2022, Hall, who is from Tennessee, imported and bottled unapproved drugs. He then “marketed these substances to individuals in the bodybuilding and fitness community to increase muscle mass, reduce body fat and counter the unwanted side effects of using bodybuilding drugs.”
That’s another way of saying Hall exploited a lucrative demand for drugs formulated to fight the onset of man boob — a condition known as gynecomastia — among bodybuilders using supplements that create an imbalance of the hormones estrogen and testosterone.
“The government further alleged that Hall obtained proceeds of approximately $3,805,470 from Rat’s Army,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office reports. “This income was, at least in part, from the sale of unapproved drugs, including Raloxifene, Tamoxifen and Pramipexole, in interstate commerce.”
Hall pleaded guilty Jan. 9 to introduction of unapproved drugs into interstate commerce and will be sentenced May 15.
Along with selling and moving the drugs, Hall’s actions also posed a health risk to the community and his customers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office says.
“Many of these substances were not safe for human use except for under the supervision of a practitioner licensed to administer prescription drugs,” the report says. “Some drugs were of similar composition to Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs, which require special boxed warnings in their labeling emphasizing serious potential side effects, including pulmonary embolism.”
Started With COVID
In December 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reviewed the rats.army website and spotted a red flag.
“The FDA has observed that your website offers ‘VIRUS BIOSHIELD’ for sale in the United States and that this product is intended to mitigate, prevent, treat, diagnose or cure COVID-19 in people. Based on our review, this product is an unapproved new drug,” stated a warning letter from the FDA and FTC.
This apparently put Hall on the FDA’s radar, and the agency tracked Rat’s Army until June 2022. In an affidavit in support of probable cause signed by Special Agent Craig Langley with the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations, the evidence stacks up like weights in a leg press.
“Hall repeatedly held out his business as a ‘pharmaceutical manufacturing’ establishment,” according to the affidavit. “Hall knowingly took steps to mislead and defraud United States regulatory agencies, including the FDA, about the true nature of the products he was selling.”
Hall’s evasion tactics included falsely portraying the products as “research chemicals” and “not for human consumption,” even though it was clear, according to Langley, that his products “were for ingestion by humans to affect the structure and function of their bodies.”
How SERMs Battle Man Boobs
In the online world of bodybuilding fitness supplements, there’s a lot of chatter about using SERMs to fight gynecomastia, aka man boobs. That chatter reflects a long history of scientific research into SERMs.
“SERMs are tamoxifen and raloxifene can help reduce the amount of breast tissue,” according to a 2018 study in the Journal of Steroids and Hormonal Science. “Tamoxifen, an estrogen antagonist, is effective for recent-onset and gentle gynecomastia. Up to 80% of patients report partial to finish resolution.”
Tamoxifen is used by oncologists to treat breast cancer, according to a 2011 report from the National Cancer Institute.
Researchers from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK reported back in 2014 that, “For more than 30 years, bodybuilders have taken tamoxifen to prevent and treat gynecomastia caused by use of anabolic steroids. Usually, tamoxifen is sourced from the illicit market.”
The study went on to report that bodybuilding discussion forums online have speculated that over the counter dietary supplements might contain tamoxifen.
In a review of the rats.army website, the online fitness influencer site Sarmguide.com, heaped praise on the business, stating, “Rat’s Army seems to be doing all the right things when it comes to their quality control. This inspires a lot of confidence in the company, and I implore you to have a look at their lab results … they are fully-fledged scientific reports.
“All in all, this really made me fall in love with this business,” continued Sarmguide.com, which predicted that others in the industry, “Are soon going to take notice of this small, but powerful company.”
Instead, federal investigators took notice.
In 2024, Sarmguide.com updated its review of Rat’s Army, reporting it, “Has shut down and stopped operating.”
Fallout With The Feds
Positive online reviews of Rat’s Army may have been based on false information, according to the Montana U.S. Attorney’s Office. In its Jan. 10 report, it alleges Hall posted “misleading Certificates of Analysis on the website to convince consumers that Rat’s Army was manufacturing products which were legitimate and safe to consume.
“Hall knew the substances he was distributing required prescriptions. But he falsely claimed, ‘You do not need a doctor to write a prescription’ or ‘access to a pharmacy, or pharmacist’ to obtain products through Rat’s Army. He repeatedly held out his company as a ‘pharmaceutical manufacturing’ business, but he was not a pharmacist, nor did he ever employ a licensed pharmacist at Rat’s Army.”
Cowboy State Daily spoke with one of Hall’s attorneys Wednesday, but he declined to comment before Hall’s sentencing in May.
Hall faces a maximum of three years in prison, a $250,000 fine and one year of supervised release.
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
