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Victor Conte, who engineered a plan to provide stealthy PEDs to elite sports stars featuring baseball greats Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and track and field star Marion Jones decades ago, has died. His age was 75.

Government Probe and Convictions

An official probe of another company established by Conte, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), resulted in the guilty verdicts of Jones, elite sprint cyclist Thomas, and retired NFL player Stubblefield, along with various support personnel and professionals.

Conte's Admissions and Prison Time

The Balco founder, who served several months in federal prison for steroid distribution, talked publicly about his well-known clients. He went on TV to state he had observed decorated Olympian Jones inject herself with human growth hormones, but always refrained from implicating Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.

Sport's Official Review

The federal case resulted in the volume Game of Shadows. Just days following the book's publication in that year, baseball Commissioner Selig brought on political figure Mitchell to look into PED use.

Conte stated he provided steroids called certain undetectable drugs and advised on their use to dozens of professional sportspeople, such as Giambi, a multiple-time All-Star, according to the report.

Employing performance-enhancing substances represents a major risk to the honesty of the sport,” the findings emphasized. “Broad usage by competitors of such substances harms the those who refuse to cheat who decline to take them and leads to skepticism about the validity of historical stats.”

The report noted the challenges were not sudden. He said everyone involved in the sport in the prior two decades – encompassing commissioners, team executives, the representative body and players – were partly accountable for what he called the doping period.

Case Inception

The federal investigation into Balco started when a IRS investigator digging through the corporate garbage. The defendant eventually confessed to two of the multiple accusations against him in 2005 prior to court proceedings. Several of the defendants sentenced were convicted for misleading grand jurors.

Associated Convictions

His fitness instructor Greg Anderson, admitted guilt to steroid distribution charges stemming from his Balco connections. Anderson was sentenced to 90 days in incarceration and an equal period of restricted movement.

The Slugger's Case

The baseball legend was indicted for deceiving a grand jury about obtaining performance-enhancing drugs and stood trial in 2011. The government abandoned his case down the line when the authorities chose not to appeal an reversed conviction to the supreme court.

A multiple MVP winner and star performer, he ended his career after the 2007 season with 762 home runs, breaking the milestone of Aaron's total that Aaron set from the 1950s to 1970s. The athlete refuted consciously consuming banned substances but has never been elected to the Hall of Fame.

Later Years

Conte told the Associated Press in a 2010 discussion that “competitors do cheat to win, but the officials and lawyers cheat to win, too.” He wondered whether the results in such proceedings justified the effort.

Post-incarceration, he got back in business in the late 2000s by rebooting a nutritional supplements business he had founded years before called SNAC System. He set up shop in the identical location that previously contained the original company in the California city.

Continued Justification

He stayed unrepentant about his central role in doling out tailored drugs to elite athletes. He argued he simply helped “even the competition” in a sports environment already rife with cheaters.

Outside Views

To a WADA member, a at the time a member of the WADA, Conte was essentially pushing cocaine or heroin. “This involves blatant drug dealing. This refers to using drugs in breach of national statutes,” Wadler said in 2007. “It's not a good deed and this is not some do-gooding. It's illegal sales.”