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Victor Conte, who engineered a system to supply undetectable PEDs to top competitors such as baseball greats Giambi and Bonds and sprinting gold medalist Jones decades ago, has passed away. He was 75.

Official Inquiry and Criminal Cases

A national inquiry regarding another company set up by him, the Bay Area lab, led to the guilty verdicts of Marion Jones, competitive biker Thomas, and retired NFL player Dana Stubblefield, in addition to various support personnel and professionals.

Conte's Admissions and Prison Time

He, who served several months in federal prison for illegal drug sales, discussed frankly about his high-profile athletes. He was featured on television to state he had seen three-time Olympic medalist Jones inject herself with growth hormones, but never directly pointing the finger at Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.

Sport's Official Review

This probe resulted in the publication titled Game of Shadows. Shortly after the publication date in that year, baseball Commissioner Selig hired ex-senator Mitchell to investigate steroids.

He admitted he sold steroids referred to as certain undetectable drugs and coached on their usage to dozens of top performers, including Jason Giambi, a five-time major league All-Star, the Mitchell report said.

“The illegal use of banned drugs represents a major risk to the integrity of the competition,” the findings emphasized. “Prevalent consumption by athletes of these compounds harms the honest athletes who refuse to use them and raises questions about the legitimacy of sporting achievements.”

The report noted the problems took time to emerge. Mitchell claimed everyone involved in the sport in the preceding decades – covering leaders, management, the representative body and athletes themselves – shared some responsibility for what he labeled the PED epoch.

Case Inception

The government's case into the company started when a IRS investigator examining the corporate garbage. Conte eventually confessed to a pair of the numerous counts filed against him in 2005 before a trial. Several of the 11 convicted people were ensnared for lying to the court.

Related Cases

Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson, confessed to steroid distribution charges stemming from his Balco connections. The court gave him to a quarter year in jail and the same duration of restricted movement.

His Court Proceedings

The home run king was accused of providing false statements to a grand jury about obtaining PEDs and faced a trial in the early 2010s. The case was dismissed his case four years later when the government decided not to contest an overturned ruling to the highest court.

A multiple MVP winner and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds retired after the 2007 season with a record home run tally, exceeding the mark of Aaron's total that Aaron established from his career. Bonds denied consciously consuming performance-enhancing drugs but has never been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Later Years

The former convict stated in an interview in a past conversation that “sportspeople break rules to triumph, but the federal representatives also bend the rules.” He doubted whether the conclusions in such proceedings justified the effort.

Post-incarceration, he resumed operations in 2007 by resuscitating a nutritional supplements business he had launched years before called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He located it in the same building that previously contained the original company in Burlingame.

Continued Justification

Conte stayed unrepentant about his major involvement in distributing custom PEDs to elite athletes. He claimed he simply helped “level the playing field” in a world full of doping athletes.

Critical Perspectives

To a WADA member, a then-member of the global anti-doping body, Conte could be compared to pushing cocaine or heroin. “It concerns unlawful substance distribution. You are talking about drug consumption in breach of national statutes,” Wadler said in the past. “It's not a good deed and it's not altruistic. This is drug dealing.”