Canadian steroid dealer asks judge to give him a break.

A Maugerville man who pleaded guilty to two counts of trafficking steroids and 10 counts of conspiracy to traffic steroids told a judge Monday he isn't a professional criminal.

"I'm an intelligent man who did a stupid thing," said 36-year-old Spencer Gordon Court.

"I'm here to take my punishment ... There's no question what I did was wrong."

But he also asked Judge Julian Dickson for a conditional sentence so he could continue to operate his legal fitness business.

The court was told he has six employees, but the business will close if he's sent to jail.

"I'm running a clear show - crystal clear," said Court.

He also said he's paying voluntary child support for his two-year-old daughter.

Court said he was working hard and running a successful fitness business prior to his arrest.

But he said he made the mistake of being too flashy with his money and began to attract the wrong crowd to his gym.

"I was consumed by the fame," said the former member of the Canadian Forces, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a closely-shaved head.

He said people in his gym began asking him for steroids to help them grow muscle mass fast.

Defence lawyer William Stephenson earlier told the court his client first started using steroids in 2000 when he was in the military and was looking for an edge when weightlifting.

Court said he began selling steroids in his gym even though he made little profit from it compared to his legitimate business.

He said he hated other illegal drugs, and he can be heard saying that in police wire taps.

But he said he considered steroids to be a grey area when it came to breaking the law.

That changed when his business and home were raided by police in 2007.

"It was scary ... It was a big wake-up call," Court said.

"The big lesson is there's no grey in the law."

Court said since 2007 he has worked hard to re-establish his business and reported in regularly with the police.

He said he's lost a lot of friends and suffered public ridicule.

"I took a media beating," he said.

He said his business has suffered and while he continued to pay his employees, at times he didn't have anything to eat.

But he also said he wasn't asking for pity.

Stephenson said steroids aren't as dangerous as heroin or cocaine.

"They're at the bottom of the serious totem pole," he said.

The defence lawyer said Court sold only to people who approached him, never sold to anyone underage and didn't sell on a large scale.

He said that huge amounts of money weren't involved. For example, 10 bottles of 100 tablets each of a steroid was worth only $4,000.

"It sounds a lot worse that it is," he said.

Stephenson said this is Court's first offence and he isn't a danger to the public.

"He's learned his lesson," he said.

"Protection of the public is not an issue."

He requested a sentence of six months of house arrest.

Federal Crown prosecutor Leonard MacKay disagreed steroids weren't dangerous.

He said their use can cause in health problems and can even result in death.

Undercover police officers purchased steroids from Court on two occasions for the amount of $1,000 and $4,000, said MacKay.

Police wiretaps of Court talking to a man in Ontario who supplied him with steroids talking about a shipment seized by police being worth $10,000.

MacKay said Court was involved in selling tens of thousands of pills, although the Crown didn't put a value on the illegal drugs.

"The amounts involved by all accounts are large amounts," he said.

MacKay asked the court to impose a two-year prison sentence.

If Dickson considered a conditional sentence, MacKay requested a fine of tens of thousands of dollars also be considered as deterrence.

The judge said he must balance the issue of the fairness of the sentence with the issue of public deterrence and the scale of Court's operation.

"This was no mom-and-pop operation," he said.

Dickson reserved his decision on sentence until Wednesday morning.

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