For all the media hype, the sentencing of actor Sylvester Stallone came as an anti-climax Monday morning at the Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney.
He was fined $2,975 for bringing banned hormones into Australia. He is also to pay prosecution costs of $10,000.A Customs search of his luggage at the start of his three-day visit to Sydney in February last had revealed 48 vials of the banned human growth hormone product, Jintropin.
Three days later he threw four vials of the male hormone testosterone out the window of his Sydney hotel room when customs officials arrived to search it. Stallone was then in Australia to promote his film Rocky Balboa.
The 60-year-old Hollywood muscleman pleaded guilty to the charges against him.
New South Wales state Deputy Chief Magistrate Paul Cloran said Stallone had tried to deceive customs officers by claiming to have a prescription for the human growth hormone, Jintropin, found in his luggage at Sydney airport in February.
He said Jintropin was not legally available for retail use in the United States and therefore could not be prescribed.
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The actor had replied that as you got older, the pituitary gland slowed and you felt older.
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“Doing Rambo is hard work and I am going to be in Burma for a while.
“Where do you think I am going to get this stuff in Burma?” Cloran, however, said that because of the publicity surrounding the case, the penalty was enough to send a clear message that such behavior would not be tolerated.
"I don't think there is anything further the court could or should do in order to deter Mr. Stallone from committing these offenses again," Cloran said.
The maximum penalty for bringing Jintropin into Australia without a license is a fine of $91,500 and five years in prison. But Stallone faced a maximum penalty $18,000 on each of the two charges and no prison time because the matter was heard in a local, not federal, court.
Source-Medindia
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