The Balco mastermind, Central Player in Notorious Sports Doping Controversy, Dies at 75.
The orchestrator of the plot, who engineered a plan to provide stealthy PEDs to professional athletes such as baseball icons Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and track and field star Jones in the past, has passed away. His age was 75.
Government Probe and Convictions
An official investigation into a separate firm set up by him, the Bay Area lab, led to the criminal findings of Jones, competitive biker Tammy Thomas, and ex-pro football defender Stubblefield, along with coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.
Open Discussions and Sentencing
Conte, who served a third of a year in federal prison for steroid distribution, discussed frankly about his famous former clients. He was featured on television to assert he had seen decorated Olympian Marion Jones inject herself with HGH, but consistently avoided implicating Barry Bonds, the baseball star.
Sport's Official Review
The federal case inspired the publication Game of Shadows. A week after the book's publication in the mid-2000s, MLB commissioner Bud Selig brought on political figure George Mitchell to investigate steroids.
He admitted he provided steroids known as two specific substances and coached on their usage to dozens of top performers, including Giambi, a star player, the Mitchell report said.
“The illegal use of performance-enhancing substances poses a serious threat to the fairness of the competition,” the findings emphasized. “Broad usage by players of such substances unfairly disadvantages the clean players who avoid them and leads to skepticism about the validity of sporting achievements.”
The report noted the problems didn’t develop overnight. Mitchell claimed each participant in the sport in the prior two decades – including commissioners, management, the players’ association and athletes themselves – were partly accountable for what he labeled the doping period.
Investigation Origins
The federal investigation into Balco was initiated by a revenue officer digging through the company’s trash. He ended up pleading guilty to a couple of the 42 charges against him in that year ahead of a court case. Six of the individuals found guilty were caught misleading federal investigators.
Related Cases
His fitness instructor Greg Anderson, confessed to drug dealing counts stemming from his Balco connections. He received a sentence to a quarter year in incarceration and three months of house arrest.
His Court Proceedings
The baseball legend was indicted for providing false statements to a grand jury about obtaining PEDs and faced a trial in the early 2010s. Prosecutors dropped his case after several years when the government decided not to contest an overturned ruling to the highest court.
A decorated player and frequent All-Star, he concluded his playing days after the 2007 campaign with a record home run tally, exceeding the milestone of 755 that Aaron set from 1954-76. The athlete refuted intentionally taking performance-enhancing drugs but has never been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
After Incarceration
Conte told the Associated Press in a 2010 discussion that “sportspeople break rules to triumph, but the government agents and prosecutors engage in misconduct as well.” He wondered whether the outcomes in such legal cases were worth the resources.
After serving his sentence, Conte got back in business in that year by resuscitating a supplements company he had founded years before called SNAC System. He set up shop in the identical location that once housed his former lab in Burlingame.
Unapologetic Views
He continued to justify about his key part in providing designer steroids to professional competitors. He argued he simply helped “level the playing field” in a arena already rife with doping athletes.
Outside Views
To a WADA member, a at the time a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, he was essentially distributing illegal narcotics. “It concerns totally illegal drug trafficking. You are talking about using drugs in defiance of legal codes,” Wadler said in 2007. “It's not a good deed and it's not altruistic. It's trafficking.”