🔗 Share this article Victor Conte, Central Player in Infamous Sports Performance-Enhancing Drug Controversy, Passes Away Aged 75. The orchestrator of the plot, who masterminded a system to provide stealthy PEDs to elite sports stars including baseball icons Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and track and field star Jones in the past, has passed away. He was 75. Official Inquiry and Legal Outcomes A national inquiry regarding an additional venture set up by him, the Bay Area lab, led to the criminal findings of Jones, top track cyclist Tammy Thomas, and ex-pro football defender Stubblefield, as well as various support personnel and professionals. Public Statements and Legal Consequences He, who spent several months in a federal facility for illegal drug sales, talked publicly about his high-profile athletes. He was featured on TV to claim he had witnessed three-time Olympic medalist Marion Jones self-administer with human growth hormones, but always refrained from implicating Barry Bonds, the baseball star. Baseball's Investigation The federal case inspired the volume Game of Shadows. A week after the publication date in the mid-2000s, baseball Commissioner Selig hired political figure Mitchell to look into PED use. He revealed he distributed steroids called two specific substances and guided their use to many top performers, such as Jason Giambi, a multiple-time All-Star, the Mitchell report said. “The illegal use of performance-enhancing substances is a significant danger to the fairness of the game,” the report stated. “Prevalent consumption by competitors of these compounds unfairly disadvantages the clean players who avoid them and creates doubts about the accuracy of baseball records.” It was stated the challenges were not sudden. Mitchell claimed everyone involved in professional baseball in the prior two decades – covering leaders, club officials, the players’ association and athletes themselves – bore partial blame for what he called “the steroids era”. Investigation Origins The federal investigation into the company started when a tax agent examining the business refuse. He ended up pleading guilty to a pair 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. Associated Convictions The athlete's coach Anderson, pleaded guilty to steroid distribution charges linked to his involvement with Balco. Anderson was sentenced to three months in jail and three months of house arrest. His Court Proceedings Bonds was charged with deceiving a grand jury about obtaining PEDs and went on trial in 2011. The government abandoned the case after several years when the authorities chose not to appeal an overturned obstruction of justice conviction to the federal apex court. A multiple MVP winner and star performer, Bonds ended his career after the 2007 season with 762 homers, breaking the record of Aaron's total that Aaron established from his career. The athlete refuted knowingly using PEDs but has never been elected to the Hall of Fame. Conte's Post-Prison Life He remarked to the press in a past conversation that “competitors do cheat to triumph, but the officials and lawyers engage in misconduct as well.” He doubted whether the conclusions in such legal cases justified the effort. After serving his sentence, he got back in business in the late 2000s by reviving a nutritional supplements business he had started two decades earlier called SNAC System. He set up shop in the very same place that previously contained the original company in Burlingame, California. Defiant Stance Conte continued to justify about his key part in distributing designer steroids to professional competitors. He maintained he simply helped “level the playing field” in a world teeming with cheaters. Expert Opinions To a WADA member, a at the time a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, he may as well have been distributing hard drugs. “This involves blatant drug dealing. You are talking about using drugs in defiance of legal codes,” the doctor remarked in that period. “This is not philanthropy and this is not some do-gooding. It's trafficking.”