🔗 Share this article The Balco mastermind, Key Figure in Infamous Sports Performance-Enhancing Drug Controversy, Passes Away Aged 75. Victor Conte, who masterminded a plan to supply undetectable performance-enhancing drugs to elite sports stars featuring baseball icons Giambi and Bonds and Olympic track champion Marion Jones years back, is deceased. He was 75. Government Probe and Legal Outcomes An official inquiry regarding an additional venture Conte founded, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), resulted in the convictions of Jones, competitive biker Thomas, and ex-pro football defender Dana Stubblefield, as well as coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer. Public Statements and Legal Consequences Conte, who completed four months in a penitentiary for dealing steroids, spoke openly about his well-known clients. He went on television to assert he had seen three-time Olympic medalist Marion Jones inject herself with HGH, but never directly incriminating Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger. Sport's Official Review The investigation led to the publication Game of Shadows. Just days following the publication date in the mid-2000s, the sport's chief Selig appointed political figure Mitchell to examine doping in baseball. He revealed he distributed steroids known as certain undetectable drugs and guided their usage to many elite athletes, including Giambi, a star player, according to the report. “The illegal use of banned drugs poses a serious threat to the honesty of the game,” the findings emphasized. “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 problems took time to emerge. Mitchell claimed all parties in baseball in the preceding decades – including commissioners, club officials, the union and players – shared some responsibility for what he called the doping period. How It Began The federal investigation into Balco began with a revenue officer examining the business refuse. The defendant ultimately admitted guilt to a couple of the multiple accusations against him in the mid-2000s ahead of a court case. Half a dozen of the defendants sentenced were ensnared for misleading grand jurors. Associated Convictions His fitness instructor Greg Anderson, admitted guilt to drug dealing counts arising from his Balco connections. Anderson was sentenced to a quarter year in prison and an equal period of home confinement. His Court Proceedings The home run king was indicted for providing false statements to a federal jury about receiving performance-enhancing drugs and faced a trial in 2011. Prosecutors dropped the charges four years later when the government decided not to contest an overturned obstruction of justice conviction to the highest court. A seven-time National League MVP and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds retired after the 2007 season with a record home run tally, surpassing the record of Aaron's total that Hank Aaron achieved from the 1950s to 1970s. Bonds denied consciously consuming PEDs but has never been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Later Years He told the Associated Press in a 2010 interview that “competitors do cheat to succeed, but the officials and lawyers engage in misconduct as well.” He wondered whether the results in these trials were worth the resources. Post-incarceration, Conte got back in business in 2007 by resuscitating a nutritional supplements business he had started two decades earlier called SNAC System. He operated in the same building that previously contained the original company in Burlingame. Continued Justification Conte continued to justify about his major involvement in providing tailored drugs to professional competitors. He maintained he simply helped “level the playing field” in a sports environment full of rule-breakers. Outside Views To Dr Gary Wadler, a at the time a member of the global anti-doping body, Conte was essentially selling hard drugs. “You are talking about unlawful substance distribution. You are talking about using drugs in defiance of legal codes,” Wadler said in 2007. “It's not a good deed and not a benevolent act. It's illegal sales.”