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Victor Conte, who masterminded a plan to supply undetectable performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes such as MLB legends Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and track and field star Jones years back, has died. He was 75.

Federal Investigation and Convictions

The federal government's probe of an additional venture Conte founded, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), culminated in the guilty verdicts of Marion Jones, competitive biker Thomas, and ex-pro football defender Stubblefield, along with trainers, suppliers, chemists, attorneys, and coaches.

Conte's Admissions and Legal Consequences

Conte, who spent several months in federal prison for illegal drug sales, spoke openly about his well-known clients. He went on television to claim he had observed decorated Olympian Jones use a syringe with HGH, but always refrained from implicating Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.

The Mitchell Report

The federal case inspired the volume titled Game of Shadows. A week after the release of the book in 2006, the sport's chief Bud Selig appointed political figure Mitchell to look into PED use.

He admitted he provided steroids known as two specific substances and coached on their application to many elite athletes, including Giambi, a five-time major league All-Star, according to the report.

Using performance-enhancing substances represents a major risk to the fairness of the competition,” the Mitchell report concluded. “Widespread use by athletes of these drugs harms the clean players who refuse to use them and creates doubts about the accuracy of historical stats.”

It was stated the issues didn’t develop overnight. Mitchell claimed all parties in professional baseball in the preceding decades – including leaders, team executives, the players’ association and players – bore partial blame for what he called the doping period.

How It Began

The federal investigation into the company began with a IRS investigator examining the company’s trash. The defendant ultimately admitted guilt to two of the numerous counts filed against him in 2005 prior to court proceedings. Six of the defendants sentenced were ensnared for misleading grand jurors.

Related Cases

The athlete's coach Anderson, confessed to drug dealing counts arising from his ties to the lab. Anderson was sentenced to a quarter year in incarceration and three months of restricted movement.

His Court Proceedings

The home run king was charged with deceiving a grand jury about receiving performance-enhancing drugs and faced a trial in 2011. Prosecutors dropped his case four years later when the government decided not to contest an overturned ruling to the federal apex court.

A multiple MVP winner and frequent All-Star, he retired after the that season with 762 homers, exceeding the mark of that number that Hank Aaron achieved from 1954-76. Bonds denied consciously consuming PEDs but has not been voted to the sport's hall of honor.

Conte's Post-Prison Life

Conte remarked to the press in a past conversation that “sportspeople break rules to win, but the federal representatives also bend the rules.” He also questioned whether the results in these trials were worth the resources.

After serving his sentence, Conte got back in business in the late 2000s by rebooting a supplements company he had launched previously called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He set up shop in the very same place that was home to Balco in Burlingame, California.

Continued Justification

Conte stayed unrepentant about his central role in doling out tailored drugs to top sports stars. He argued he simply helped “balance the odds” in a arena already rife with cheaters.

Critical Perspectives

To a WADA member, a at the time a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Conte could be compared to distributing illegal narcotics. “This involves unlawful substance distribution. This refers to substance use in breach of national statutes,” Wadler said in 2007. “It's not a good deed and it's not altruistic. This is drug dealing.”