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Victor Conte, who devised a plan to provide undetectable banned substances to top competitors including MLB legends Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and Olympic track champion Marion Jones years back, has passed away. 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 Marion Jones, top track cyclist Tammy Thomas, and ex-pro football defender Dana Stubblefield, along with various support personnel and professionals.

Open Discussions and Legal Consequences

Conte, who completed four months in a penitentiary for steroid distribution, spoke openly about his high-profile athletes. He was featured on television to claim he had witnessed three-time Olympic medalist Jones self-administer with growth hormones, but always refrained from implicating Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.

The Mitchell Report

The investigation resulted in the volume Game of Shadows. Just days following the publication date in the mid-2000s, MLB commissioner Selig appointed former senate majority leader George Mitchell to investigate steroids.

He admitted he provided steroids referred to as two specific substances and advised on their use to dozens of elite athletes, including Giambi, a star player, according to the report.

“The illegal use of banned drugs is a significant danger to the integrity of the sport,” the report stated. “Broad usage by athletes of such substances unfairly disadvantages the honest athletes who refuse to use them and raises questions about the validity of sporting achievements.”

The report noted the issues didn’t develop overnight. The report emphasized all parties in professional baseball in the prior two decades – encompassing commissioners, team executives, the representative body and players – bore partial blame for what he called “the steroids era”.

How It Began

The official probe into the company began with a IRS investigator digging through the business refuse. Conte eventually confessed to a pair of the numerous counts he faced in that year before a trial. Six of the defendants sentenced were ensnared for deceiving grand jurors.

Related Cases

His fitness instructor Greg Anderson, pleaded guilty to drug dealing counts stemming from his Balco connections. The court gave him to a quarter year in jail and three months of home confinement.

The Slugger's Case

The home run king was charged with providing false statements to a grand jury about obtaining PEDs and faced a trial in the early 2010s. The government abandoned the case down the line when the government decided not to contest an overturned ruling to the federal apex court.

A seven-time National League MVP and star performer, Bonds ended his career after the 2007 season with 762 homers, surpassing the mark of Aaron's total that Aaron set from 1954-76. Bonds denied knowingly using PEDs but has failed to gain entry to the sport's hall of honor.

After Incarceration

The former convict told the Associated Press in a past conversation that “competitors do cheat to win, but the officials and lawyers also bend the rules.” He also questioned whether the conclusions in such proceedings were worth the resources.

Following his prison term, Conte got back in business in that year by resuscitating a supplements company he had founded two decades earlier called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He set up shop in the identical location that previously contained Balco in Burlingame, California.

Unapologetic Views

He remained defiant about his key part in providing custom PEDs to professional competitors. He claimed he simply helped “even the competition” in a sports environment already rife with doping athletes.

Critical Perspectives

To Dr Gary Wadler, a former participant of the WADA, he could be compared to selling hard drugs. “This involves unlawful substance distribution. It's about substance use in defiance of legal codes,” Wadler said in that period. “This is not philanthropy and it's not altruistic. It's trafficking.”