Paradigm Peptides (Matthew Kawa and Jennifer Stechkober)

This is one entry from the TitrateLab Vendor Graveyard, a dated archive of peptide-market shutdowns, buyer-loss reports and enforcement actions. Documented as pleas December 10, 2025; sentenced July 30, 2026. Evidence tier: Official or peer-reviewed record. Sources for this entry are linked inline below and annotated in the full Vendor Graveyard entry.

Matthew Kawa, owner of Paradigm Peptides, was sentenced on July 30, 2026 to 70 months in prison for introducing unapproved new drugs into interstate commerce with intent to defraud or mislead. His sister and co-defendant, Jennifer Stechkober, was sentenced to 16 months.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana, Kawa owned an internet business known as “Paradigm Peptides” or “Paradigm R.E. LLC” that sold peptides, hCG and SARMs through paradigmpeptides.com and shipped from an address in Michigan City, Indiana. Both defendants pleaded guilty on December 10, 2025; Kawa also pleaded guilty to illegally importing merchandise. Judge Cristal C. Brisco sentenced both on July 30, 2026, each to one year of supervised release after prison, and ordered $78,317.52 in restitution, jointly and severally. The court entered a $5 million money judgment against Kawa.

The Justice Department’s release states that many products sold as SARMs were actually testosterone, that the business falsely claimed FDA registration, US manufacturing and product testing while importing from China and India without testing, and that Kawa kept selling after FDA warning letters in 2020 and 2022. It puts sales from 2019 to 2024 at more than 54,000 customers in all 50 states and more than 80 countries. The DOJ case page asks buyers from April 2019 to March 2024 to contact its victim-witness specialist. CBS News reported the judge telling Kawa he had left “an incredible trail of harm”, and that Paradigm shut down in March 2024.

Correction, October 1, 2026. An earlier version of this entry described Kawa as the owner of both Paradigm Peptides and Amino Asylum, called the case a "multi-brand plea", and dated it from a reported June 2025 raid on an Amino Asylum warehouse. The Justice Department record names Paradigm Peptides and Paradigm R.E. LLC only, and we found no FDA, DOJ or court record of that raid. We have removed the Amino Asylum link and the raid entry, and moved this page from /research/graveyard/paradigm-amino-asylum-plea to /research/graveyard/paradigm-peptides.

Why it matters: it is the longest custodial sentence in this archive.

Evidence tier: Official or peer-reviewed record.

Sources: DOJ Northern District of Indiana sentencing release, July 30, 2026; DOJ case page, United States v. Matthew Kawa; CBS News, July 30, 2026.

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Dated shutdowns, buyer-loss reports and enforcement actions, 2020-2026, each with its evidence tier and sources.