The man behind the scheme, who masterminded a operation to provide hard-to-detect PEDs to top competitors including baseball icons Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and sprinting gold medalist Jones years back, is deceased. He was 75.
A national probe of a separate firm Conte founded, the Bay Area lab, culminated in the guilty verdicts of Marion Jones, top track cyclist Tammy Thomas, and ex-pro football defender Stubblefield, along with various support personnel and professionals.
Conte, who spent several months in federal prison for illegal drug sales, spoke openly about his well-known clients. He was featured on TV to state he had observed triple Olympic champion Marion Jones inject herself with human growth hormones, but always refrained from incriminating Barry Bonds, the baseball star.
The investigation resulted in the book Game of Shadows. A week after the book's publication in that year, MLB commissioner Selig brought on former senate majority leader George Mitchell to look into PED use.
He revealed he provided steroids called two specific substances and guided their use to dozens of top performers, such as Jason Giambi, a five-time major league All-Star, according to the report.
Employing performance-enhancing substances represents a major risk to the honesty of the competition,” the Mitchell report concluded. “Prevalent consumption by athletes of these drugs unfairly disadvantages the those who refuse to cheat who refuse to use them and raises questions about the validity of baseball records.”
It was stated the problems didn’t develop overnight. He said everyone involved in the sport in the previous twenty years – encompassing commissioners, club officials, the representative body and players – shared some responsibility for what he termed the PED epoch.
The federal investigation into Balco began with a IRS investigator digging through the corporate garbage. He ended up pleading guilty to a couple of the 42 charges he faced in that year ahead of a court case. Half a dozen of the 11 convicted people were ensnared for lying to grand jurors.
His fitness instructor Greg Anderson, confessed to steroid distribution charges arising from his involvement with Balco. He received a sentence to 90 days in prison and three months of home confinement.
Bonds was indicted for deceiving a grand jury about obtaining performance-enhancing drugs and went on trial in the early 2010s. The government abandoned the case four years later when the prosecutors opted not to contest an overturned obstruction of justice conviction to the federal apex court.
A seven-time National League MVP and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds ended his career after the 2007 campaign with 762 homers, exceeding the milestone of Aaron's total that Hank Aaron established from his career. Bonds denied knowingly using PEDs but has failed to gain entry to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
He told the Associated Press in a 2010 discussion that “competitors do cheat to triumph, but the federal representatives also bend the rules.” He also questioned whether the outcomes in these trials were worth the resources.
After serving his sentence, Conte got back in business in the late 2000s by reviving a health products venture he had founded previously called his supplements brand. He set up shop in the same building that previously contained Balco in Burlingame.
Conte remained defiant about his central role in distributing tailored drugs to top sports stars. He maintained he simply helped “even the competition” in a world full of doping athletes.
To an expert, a at the time a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Conte may as well have been distributing cocaine or heroin. “It concerns unlawful substance distribution. This refers to substance use in breach of national statutes,” the doctor remarked in 2007. “This isn't charity and not a benevolent act. It's trafficking.”
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