Atomic Punk is right. Many guys just have their gear confiscated and pay a fine. Others are less fortunate. It varies, often without any legitimate reasoning. Here's an excerpt from the chapter on Borders and Steroid Smuggling in my book LEGAL MUSCLE. It's an absolutely true, verified, firsthand, articulate account of the process from the girlfriend of a client of mine who was arrested at a border crossing, printed word-for-word and edited only as to name. Interestingly, Jerry wasn’t a bodybuilder and nothing about him or his girlfriend would have fit a profile for smuggling. Jerry had just bought the steroids from a pharmacy not too far from the border. Pharmacy employees taped up the anabolics into a pack and hid the pack in the car. Jerry’s case, and numerous others very much like it, would support the hypothesis that your friend at La Farmacia may be an undercover mole (and that’s mole as in rodent, not as in molé sauce). Could somebody in Customs have shelled out a few bucks for the tip-off on Jerry? Customs felt obliged to refer the case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for prosecution as a whoop-de-do federal felony importation indictment when most cases with many times the quantity are routinely settled with a fine. Jerry’s total quantity was only 16 vials and 40 tablets....
***********
"When we first got to the border, we paid our toll and then drove up to the first guy. He asked us if we had any alcohol, etc., to declare and we said no, just some pottery. He placed a yellow piece of paper on the windshield of my car and told us to pull up to slot 10. When we pulled further, there were already, I'm estimating, 5-10 Customs people waiting in that area. We pulled up and they asked us to get out of the vehicle and for Jerry to open the hood and the trunk. I walked over and sat on a concrete pillar while Jerry stood on the driver’s side of the door.
The Customs guys went straight to the passenger side of my car, lifted the front seat and then popped the back inside area out enough to shine a flash light in. He immediately thought he found something and called another guy over to have a look. This was the first place the officer looked. My dash hadn't even been looked in, nor had my trunk, our luggage, the front seats, or anything else for that matter. As soon as they pulled the stuff out of my car, they went straight to Jerry, even though it was my car, and asked him about it. I am not sure exactly what he told them but the next thing was they had his hands above his head and was searching his clothes for items. They took him inside and as they did so I looked at Jerry and asked what was going on.
As soon as he was inside the officers came to me and asked if I knew what was going on and I said no, I knew nothing about what they were doing at that moment or anything about steroids they claimed to have found in my car. They officer asked me to empty my pockets and I did, nothing was in them. The next thing I remember was there were 3-4 officers standing around me, all asking questions one right after the next. For example: Do you know anything about the steroids?, Why would Jerry have them?, He doesn't look like a bodybuilder, is he just getting started becoming one? It was very overwhelming and the questions didn't seem to stop. Eventually I started crying and they laid off the questioning. They asked me to have a seat by my car for a while.
Eventually they called me in and read me my rights; that I didn’t have to answer questions without an attorney etc. Nice to have known that after they already overwhelmed me with them. When they first brought me in the building, they showed me the steroids all together in one pack. They clearly didn't care that it was evidence and "tossed" it around like it didn't matter. I looked in the bag and recognized vitamin B-12. The larger bottles had had their labels torn a good bit due to the tape that was on them.
The officer then took me into one room that looked like the office and read me my rights and asked if I wanted a lawyer. I replied I have no idea what is really going on and really didn't know if I needed one. I then asked what he thought and he replied that if I didn't have anything to hide then it would make it much smoother and faster on him if I didn't and that by cooperating it would make it better for the both of us. This all began around 10:30-11:00 that morning and we didn’t leave there until 8pm. At first they were going to just put a 500 dollar penalty on the car and then all of a sudden, when they realized getting that amount of money wasn’t such a big deal, they said oh well, it’s going to go by what your car is worth. Then one officer said 15% of the value, which he estimated at 10,995 dollars or something close to that. Jerry said he would have his bank wire him money and we would be able to get the car and I would be able to follow him to Del Rio that night.
Well at first, that was fine, one of the officers said he would take Jerry across the street (directly across) to the western union and he could get the money. But then for some reason they said, oh, no, we can’t do that, now you have to find another way to get the money. Well, Jerry couldn’t have money from his account wired to me so that made matters a little worse. It was going to be the next day before I could get my car out which meant I would be staying in Eagle Pass, Tx and Jerry would be going to Del Rio on his own. That evening is when I looked up the web site Jerry had somehow gotten to tell me about and contacted your emergency number."