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Victor Conte, who engineered a operation to supply hard-to-detect banned substances to professional athletes such as MLB legends Giambi and Bonds and sprinting gold medalist Marion Jones decades ago, has died. His age was 75.

Government Probe and Criminal Cases

A national probe of another company Conte founded, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), resulted in the criminal findings of Jones, top track cyclist Tammy Thomas, and former NFL defensive lineman Stubblefield, in addition to coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Public Statements and Sentencing

Conte, who served several months in a federal facility for illegal drug sales, discussed frankly about his well-known clients. He appeared on television to claim he had observed decorated Olympian Jones use a syringe with human growth hormones, but consistently avoided implicating Bonds, the Giants power hitter.

Sport's Official Review

The federal case resulted in the book Game of Shadows. Just days following the book's publication in that year, baseball Commissioner Selig appointed ex-senator George Mitchell to look into PED use.

He revealed he distributed steroids known as certain undetectable drugs and advised on their usage to dozens of top performers, like Giambi, a star player, as per the investigation.

“The illegal use of banned drugs poses a serious threat to the integrity of the game,” the Mitchell report concluded. “Broad usage by players of such substances unfairly disadvantages the clean players who decline to take them and leads to skepticism about the validity of baseball records.”

The report noted the issues took time to emerge. Mitchell claimed each participant in professional baseball in the prior two decades – covering leaders, club officials, the representative body and players – bore partial blame for what he called the PED epoch.

Case Inception

The official probe into Balco started when a revenue officer digging through the company’s trash. He ended up pleading guilty to two of the numerous counts he faced in that year before a trial. Six of the individuals found guilty were ensnared for misleading the court.

Associated Convictions

Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson, confessed to illegal substance sales linked to his involvement with Balco. Anderson was sentenced to three months in jail and the same duration of restricted movement.

His Court Proceedings

The baseball legend was accused of providing false statements to a investigative body about receiving PEDs and faced a trial in that year. Prosecutors dropped the charges after several years when the prosecutors opted not to appeal an overturned ruling to the supreme court.

A seven-time National League MVP and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds ended his career after the that season with 762 homers, surpassing the milestone of that number that Hank Aaron set from the 1950s to 1970s. He claimed he did not consciously consuming PEDs but has not been voted to the Hall of Fame.

After Incarceration

The former convict remarked to the press in a 2010 interview that “sportspeople break rules to triumph, but the government agents and prosecutors cheat to win, too.” He doubted whether the outcomes in these trials merited the work.

Post-incarceration, he got back in business in the late 2000s by rebooting a supplements company he had started years before called his supplements brand. He operated in the same building that previously contained the original company in the California city.

Defiant Stance

He continued to justify about his central role in doling out custom PEDs to top sports stars. He claimed he simply helped “level the playing field” in a sports environment already rife with rule-breakers.

Critical Perspectives

To a WADA member, a at the time a member of the global anti-doping body, Conte may as well have been distributing hard drugs. “You are talking about blatant drug dealing. You are talking about using drugs in breach of national statutes,” he stated in 2007. “This is not philanthropy and not a benevolent act. This is drug dealing.”