Screwball

I get a call from Gary Jones.

He is our tanning technician

that changes bulbs and fixes wires on tanning beds

at Boca Tanning Club at Boca Raton.

He calls me up.

"Hey, why don't you... You gotta stop by the salon. I'll meet you there.

I got this new solution, you're gonna love it."

I show up.

I parked in the back.

Gary's there, Anthony's there.

And he's like, "Well, go on in there, go try the solution."

So I go in there, and I get the spray tan.

I come back out and Gary's in the lobby.

"Hey, yo, how does it smell? Oh, the color looks fantastic.

Hey, how did... Doesn't the color look fantastic?" Blah, blah.

"Hey, you know what, that's great, I'm gonna go give it a try."

Got my shoes on and I'm walking out to my car.

And I see my door's open, and my trunk is open.

"Is that my car?"

Everything's gone.

So I go running back into the salon

and I yell at the girl. I said, "Call 911. Call 911."

I went back to the room and I'm banging on the door.

I'm like, "Gary, get out here, I've been robbed!"

He's like, "What?" I'm like, "Somebody broke into my car,

and took all my shit. Took everything."

The cop shows up.

I'm jumping up and down, I'm telling the cop,

"Look, they took everything. They took everything."

And he's like, "Calm down." I'm like, "They took evidence.

They took State's evidence, for a criminal case."

"Whoa, what are you talking about?" I go, "Biogenesis.

Biogenesis. Baseball. Alex.

You know who... You know what I'm talking about? A-Rod!"

Play ball!

I was living in a hotel room at The Ritz in Key Biscayne.

It was private. I was looking for privacy.

You know, I was going through this separation, through the divorce,

and it was an emotional time,

it was a time of decisions.

One day, I was sitting at the hotel bar,

like I did, probably at three or four o'clock everyday,

drowning my sorrows, and I overheard the bartender

speaking with the other bartender.

And they were discussing how they work out in the gym

and what they use in the gym

and how Equipoise is better than Winstrol

or how to take steroids, growth hormones, and performance-enhancing drugs.

"Listen, with all due respect,

I don't want to get involved in your business

but I think you're doing that a little wrong."

And he says, "Well, what do you mean?"

"I don't think you should use the growth hormone

with the dosages that you're using,

and the way you're using it.

You have a natural production of growth hormone in the evening.

You have one in the morning. But the one in the evening

is a lot greater than the one in the morning,

and, you know, you should then follow that same pattern

of growth hormone release."

He says, "Well, I don't understand, nobody explained it like this.

The guy in the gym, my trainer told me to take it like this.

Can you repeat that, but so I can understand?"

I said, "Yeah, sure, not a problem."

So I took a napkin and I wrote the whole thing down on the napkin.

About five days later, he sees me, he says,

"That's a great protocol! My workouts are unbelievable.

I feel re-energized. I lost a few pounds.

Do you mind if you could help my wife out, too?"

Four or five days later,

he comes back, he says,

"My wife is dying to meet you.

She has about three friends for you."

So, really, at the end of the day,

I acquired my first clients

at a bar at The Ritz.

That's really the origin story of me in Miami,

starting my anti-aging clinic.

Tony Bosch has a really typical Miami, Cuban-American story

that's also pretty extraordinary in its own ways.

His dad is a licensed physician

who studied in Cuba and actually

trained in a hospital in Havana during the revolution.

My parents, they were both physicians.

He also was related to a guy named Orlando Bosch

who ended up becoming one of the most famous

anti-Castro terrorists in Miami history.

Dr. Orlando Bosch served four years in jail here

for the late '60s bazooka attack

on a Polish ship in the port of Miami.

From the moment I remember, we were playing stickball in the street,

you know, or some form of baseball. I wanted to be a baseball player.

You know, what kid didn't want to be a baseball player and play for the Mets?

These guys were like my heroes, you know, growing up.

I started playing baseball

in Christopher Columbus High School, Miami.

It's an all boys private Catholic school.

Alex Rodriguez, he went there, too.

He wasn't A-Rod back then, he was just Alex Rodriguez.

It was a breeding ground for ball players.

Cuban-Americans, the sons of refugees,

they had this passion for the sport.

It's not a surprise,

considering this is basically the capital of Latin America

and baseball is enormous in a lot of these countries.

I think, even though a lot of people associate football

to the state of Florida and to Miami,

baseball is king.

You go to any high school here, there are...

Stars in the making.

Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro, Danny Tartabull,

Lenny Harris.

Heroes in the game in that era had to be, hands down, Jose Canseco.

I mean, he was a real deal.

With or without the steroids,

you know, I believe he was a great ball player.

And the Cuban people in Miami was very proud of him.

He was a role model, he was a hero.

It was the American dream.

But my all time hero was Pete Rose.

Charlie Hustle. I just loved the way he played.

He played hard, he played with a passion,

he played with a love for the sport,

he was everything, you know, to me growing up.

Yeah, I think the Cubans are a little permissive with their heroes.

You know, the first year, I didn't play much

and I think I was more interested in girls back then. In the party scene.

I got kicked off the team, I think two times.

One for smoking weed, you know, getting high.

Another time for showing up late to practice

or not showing up.

It was just...

Thinking back on, it was a disaster.

You know... I'm better off as a fan than a player.

My plan after high school was definitely go into the family business.

You know, go into medicine.

Uh, unfortunately, you know, privilege alone isn't enough

to get a medical degree.

You kinda have to have the drive, you have to have the intelligence.

And, uh, Tony didn't have what it took

to become a doctor in the United States.

So, I said, you know,

the fastest path is a foreign medical school.

Belize is the only English-speaking country in Central America.

That's why I chose Belize Medical College.

That program was a three-and-a-half year program.

You could obtain your doctor degree in allopathic medicine,

which basically means, you know,

M.D., Medical Doctor.

The Belize School of Medical and Performing Arts,

I believe is the actual title.

Let's just say it doesn't meet typical US standards

for a medical school.

And that's where I basically decided

I wanted to get into the anti-aging business.

Florida was known for Ponce de León and the Fountain of Youth.

And so it was very fitting

to, you know, open up here in Miami.

What is Miami about? What is Florida about?

It's about vanity and sex.

Florida, the penis of America!

Florida, the penis of America.

It was a perfect place

for the anti-aging movement.

Florida became the anti-aging capital of the world

'cause of the laws in the anti-aging industry.

There was no laws.

The anti-aging clinics had exploded in numbers

by the time I got here in 2011.

And basically, you'd have doctors,

or people who pretended to be doctors,

giving all types of medical advice.

Um, and in many times, writing prescriptions.

There's almost no regulations, so anyone can open one of these clinics,

even someone as unqualified as Tony Bosch.

And he jumps right in, he starts off with a clinic in Key Biscayne

which is a very wealthy island town just off Miami.

The role I took was basically as an educator.

I considered myself the scientist behind the scenes,

rather than a, you know, physician.

Anthony Bosch was portraying himself as a medical doctor

by giving people anti-aging supplements.

Testosterone, HGH, so on and so forth,

which he was not licensed to do here in the state of Florida,

or in any other state in the union.

I didn't have prescription powers in the state of Florida,

but the doctors that worked for me did.

He would find a doctor, an actual licensed doctor,

to put their name on the operation.

His most obvious solution was his own father,

who was a licensed doctor, who had a prescription pad.

And for several of the anti-aging clinics was listed as the Medical Director.

Thousands of doctors retire to Florida, basically,

when they're done operating a practice elsewhere in the country,

and these doctors rent out their prescription pads

and their DEA numbers,

so that people like Tony Bosch

can get drugs and run anti-aging clinics.

And they get a little cut of the profit.

They had a prescription pad from one doctor