🔗 Share this article The Balco mastermind, Key Figure in Infamous Sports Performance-Enhancing Drug Scandal, Dies at 75. Victor Conte, who devised a operation to supply stealthy performance-enhancing drugs to top competitors such as baseball icons Giambi and Bonds and sprinting gold medalist Jones in the past, is deceased. He was 75. Federal Investigation and Convictions The federal government's probe of another company Conte founded, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), culminated in the criminal findings of Marion Jones, competitive biker Tammy Thomas, and retired NFL player Dana Stubblefield, in addition to trainers, suppliers, chemists, attorneys, and coaches. Conte's Admissions and Sentencing The Balco founder, who spent four months in a federal facility for dealing steroids, spoke openly about his well-known clients. He appeared on TV to state he had seen triple Olympic champion Marion Jones self-administer with HGH, but always refrained from incriminating Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger. Baseball's Investigation This probe led to the book titled Game of Shadows. A week after the release of the book in that year, baseball Commissioner Selig appointed former senate majority leader Mitchell to look into PED use. He revealed he provided steroids called certain undetectable drugs and coached on their application to many top performers, including Jason Giambi, a star player, the Mitchell report said. Employing performance-enhancing substances is a significant danger to the honesty of the game,” the report stated. “Broad usage by competitors of such substances unfairly disadvantages the clean players who refuse to use them and creates doubts about the validity of historical stats.” The report noted the challenges didn’t develop overnight. Mitchell claimed all parties in baseball in the previous twenty years – including leaders, club officials, the representative body and players – bore partial blame for what he labeled the PED epoch. Case Inception The official probe into the laboratory was initiated by a IRS investigator examining the company’s trash. Conte ultimately admitted guilt to a couple of the multiple accusations filed against him in that year ahead of a court case. Several of the individuals found guilty were ensnared for lying to the court. Related Cases His fitness instructor Anderson, confessed to illegal substance sales stemming from his Balco connections. The court gave him to a quarter year in incarceration and the same duration of house arrest. The Slugger's Case The home run king was charged with deceiving a investigative body about receiving PEDs and faced a trial in that year. The government abandoned his case four years later when the authorities chose not to contest an reversed conviction to the federal apex court. A decorated player and star performer, Bonds concluded his playing days after the that season with 762 home runs, exceeding the record of that number that Hank Aaron set from 1954-76. Bonds denied knowingly using banned substances but has failed to gain entry to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Conte's Post-Prison Life He told the Associated Press in a 2010 discussion that “competitors do cheat to triumph, but the government agents and prosecutors engage in misconduct as well.” He wondered whether the outcomes in such legal cases justified the effort. Following his prison term, Conte got back in business in the late 2000s by rebooting a health products venture he had launched two decades earlier called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He set up shop in the same building that once housed his former lab in Burlingame. Continued Justification The controversial figure stayed unrepentant about his major involvement in distributing designer steroids to top sports stars. He argued he simply helped “level the playing field” in a sports environment already rife with doping athletes. Expert Opinions To a WADA member, a former participant of the global anti-doping body, Conte could be compared to distributing cocaine or heroin. “You are talking about totally illegal drug trafficking. This refers to drug consumption in violation of federal law,” he stated in that period. “It's not a good deed and this is not some do-gooding. This is drug dealing.”