What Happened to Paradigm Peptides?
Most vendor disappearances leave you guessing. This one does not — there is a federal court record, and the government has published a page about it. Here is what that record actually says, sourced line by line.
Domain status independently checked and page reviewed July 31, 2026.
The short version
Paradigm Peptides was an internet business selling peptides, hCG and products marketed as SARMs, shipping from Michigan City, Indiana. It stopped selling around March 2024. More than a year and a half later, in December 2025, its owner and one employee pleaded guilty to federal charges, and both were sentenced in July 2026. The website no longer works.
The order of those events matters, because it is almost always reported backwards. Paradigm did not shut down in response to being charged — sales had already ended roughly 21 months before anyone entered a plea. The DOJ's own page implies as much: when it addresses potential victims, the purchase window it names closes in March 2024. Any account that has the charges arriving first and the business closing as a result has the sequence wrong.
Everything above comes from two sources, both linked below: the case page published by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Indiana, and CBS News reporting on the sentencing. Where those sources are silent, so are we.
What the DOJ case page says
The DOJ page identifies the business and the people involved in specific terms. It describes Matthew Kawa as the owner of an internet business known as “Paradigm Peptides” or “Paradigm R.E. LLC,” which operated a website at paradigmpeptides.com and shipped products to thousands of customers throughout the United States from an address in Michigan City, Indiana. It describes Jennifer Stechkober as Kawa's sister and an employee of the business.
That last detail is worth pausing on, because a great many pages about this closure describe Stechkober as a co-owner. The government's own page does not. We corrected this page after checking the source directly.
On the conduct under investigation, the DOJ page states:
“Federal Investigators have determined that many of the products advertised, labeled, and sold to customers as containing SARMs in fact contained testosterone. Testosterone is a controlled substance. In addition, federal investigators also believe that the SARM, hCG, and peptide products sold by Paradigm Peptides were new drugs unapproved by the Food and Drug Administration.”
And on the pleas:
“On December 10, 2025, both defendants, Matthew Kawa and Jennifer Stechkober, entered a plea of guilty to the charge(s) in the Information.”
Timeline
- April 2019 – March 2024. The purchase window the DOJ identifies when addressing potential victims. Its closing date is the clearest public marker of when the business stopped selling.
- December 10, 2025. Roughly 21 months after sales ended, Matthew Kawa and Jennifer Stechkober each entered a plea of guilty to the charges in the Information, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
- July 30, 2026. Both were sentenced before Judge Cristal C. Brisco in South Bend. Per CBS News, Kawa received 70 months in federal prison and agreed to forfeit $5 million in proceeds from the business; Stechkober received 16 months.
An earlier version of this page gave a sentencing date of March 24, 2026. That was wrong — the hearing was rescheduled and the sentences were imposed on July 30, 2026. That version also described both defendants as owners, asserted a legal conclusion about them being barred from the industry, and framed the closure as a consequence of the charges. None of those hold up against the DOJ record, and all have been corrected.
If you were a Paradigm Peptides customer
The DOJ case page speaks to former customers directly: if you purchased any products from Paradigm Peptides between April 2019 and March 2024, you may or may not be a victim in the case. Anyone who believes they are is asked to call 219-937-5500 and ask for the Victim Witness Specialist. That is the government's line. We have no involvement in the case, cannot tell you whether it applies to you, and gain nothing from your calling it.
What the site does now
We requested paradigmpeptides.com repeatedly on July 31, 2026. The domain still resolves through its CDN, but nothing is served from behind it: every attempt returned a CDN error rather than a page — 522 Connection timed out on each of five consecutive checks, and a 403 on an earlier one. There is no storefront and no closure notice. Unlike some other closed vendors, Paradigm published nothing at all to its former customers at this domain.
The practical implication: anything that presents itself as a working Paradigm Peptides store is not being served from the original domain. Verify independently before entering payment details anywhere making that claim.
The lesson worth taking from this one
The documented allegation here was a labelling problem: products sold as one thing that investigators determined contained another. That is not something a customer can detect by looking at a vial, a website, or a brand's reputation — which is exactly why independent, lot-level testing is the part of a supplier's operation worth scrutinising before you order.
Concretely, that means asking for the certificate of analysis for the specific batch you would be shipped, from an independent lab, published rather than emailed on request. A representative COA from some other lot tells you very little. Pure U.S. Peptides publishes the lot-specific certificate on the SKU page for 37 of its 53 listings — for example TB-500, Ipamorelin, Selank and Semax — and we would encourage you to hold any vendor, us included, to that standard. Held to it ourselves: 16 of our 53 listings, including both BPC-157 vial sizes, currently show a pending-upload status rather than a posted certificate.
For the answer-style summary of these facts, see Paradigm Peptides Shut Down. For a supplier comparison, see our Paradigm Peptides alternative page.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Justice — United States v. Matthew Kawa (U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Indiana).
- CBS News — reporting on the July 30, 2026 sentencing.
- paradigmpeptides.com — requested directly on July 31, 2026; returned a CDN 522 origin error.
Frequently asked
When did Paradigm Peptides actually stop selling?
Around March 2024 — which is roughly 21 months before the December 2025 guilty pleas. This is the detail most accounts get backwards: the business had already stopped selling long before anyone was charged, so it did not close in response to the case. The DOJ’s victim-contact notice names a purchase window of April 2019 to March 2024.
Is paradigmpeptides.com still online?
Not in any working sense. The domain still resolves through its CDN, but nothing is served from behind it — repeated checks on July 31, 2026 returned “522 Connection timed out” errors, and an earlier attempt returned a 403. There is no storefront and no closure notice from the company.
What happened in the federal case?
Per the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana: “On December 10, 2025, both defendants, Matthew Kawa and Jennifer Stechkober, entered a plea of guilty to the charge(s) in the Information.” The DOJ page states investigators determined many products sold as SARMs in fact contained testosterone, a controlled substance.
Who were Matthew Kawa and Jennifer Stechkober?
The DOJ page identifies Matthew Kawa as the owner of the business, operating as “Paradigm Peptides” or “Paradigm R.E. LLC.” It identifies Jennifer Stechkober as Kawa’s sister and an employee of the business — not a co-owner, as is frequently misreported.
Was anyone sentenced?
Yes. Per CBS News, both were sentenced on July 30, 2026 by Judge Cristal Brisco in South Bend, Indiana. Matthew Kawa received 70 months in federal prison and agreed to forfeit $5 million in proceeds from the business. Jennifer Stechkober received 16 months.
I bought from Paradigm Peptides. Am I affected?
The DOJ case page says that anyone who purchased from Paradigm Peptides between April 2019 and March 2024 may or may not be a victim in the case, and asks those who believe they are to call 219-937-5500 and ask for the Victim Witness Specialist. We are not involved in the case and cannot advise on it.
Could Paradigm Peptides come back?
We do not know, and we are not going to guess about what any individual may or may not do in future. What we can say is that no working site is being served from the original domain, and any site claiming to be Paradigm Peptides should be verified independently before you enter payment details.