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Victor Conte, who engineered a plan to supply hard-to-detect banned substances to elite sports stars featuring baseball icons Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and Olympic track champion Jones decades ago, has died. He reached 75 years.

Federal Investigation and Convictions

The federal government's probe of a separate firm established by Conte, Balco, led to the guilty verdicts of Marion Jones, elite sprint cyclist Tammy Thomas, and ex-pro football defender Stubblefield, as well as trainers, suppliers, chemists, attorneys, and coaches.

Conte's Admissions and Legal Consequences

Conte, who completed several months in federal prison for dealing steroids, spoke openly about his well-known clients. He appeared on television to assert he had witnessed three-time Olympic medalist Jones use a syringe with growth hormones, but always refrained from implicating Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.

Sport's Official Review

The federal case inspired the book Game of Shadows. Just days following the book's publication in that year, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig appointed political figure Mitchell to investigate steroids.

He revealed he sold steroids referred to as two specific substances and guided their application to dozens of elite athletes, such as Jason Giambi, a multiple-time All-Star, the Mitchell report said.

“The illegal use of PEDs is a significant danger to the honesty of the game,” the report stated. “Broad usage by competitors of these drugs harms the honest athletes who avoid them and leads to skepticism about the validity of historical stats.”

It was stated the problems didn’t develop overnight. He said everyone involved in baseball in the previous twenty years – encompassing commissioners, team executives, the representative body and athletes themselves – were partly accountable for what he termed the PED epoch.

How It Began

The federal investigation into the company was initiated by a IRS investigator examining the business refuse. Conte eventually confessed to two of the numerous counts he faced in 2005 ahead of a court case. Six of the 11 convicted people were caught deceiving federal investigators.

Related Cases

The athlete's coach Anderson, admitted guilt to drug dealing counts linked to his involvement with Balco. Anderson was sentenced to a quarter year in incarceration and the same duration of house arrest.

The Slugger's Case

Bonds was indicted for lying to a federal jury about obtaining PEDs and faced a trial in 2011. The government abandoned the charges four years later when the prosecutors opted not to appeal an reversed conviction to the supreme court.

A seven-time National League MVP and frequent All-Star, Bonds retired after the 2007 campaign with a record home run tally, exceeding the record of 755 that Hank Aaron established from his career. He claimed he did not intentionally taking banned substances but has never been elected to the sport's hall of honor.

Conte's Post-Prison Life

Conte stated in an interview in a 2010 discussion that “sportspeople break rules to triumph, but the federal representatives also bend the rules.” He wondered whether the outcomes in such proceedings merited the work.

Post-incarceration, he got back in business in that year by rebooting a supplements company he had founded two decades earlier called his supplements brand. He set up shop in the same building that previously contained Balco in Burlingame.

Defiant Stance

Conte remained defiant about his central role in distributing custom PEDs to professional competitors. He claimed he simply helped “balance the odds” in a world teeming with cheaters.

Outside Views

To a WADA member, a former participant of the WADA, Conte may as well have been selling illegal narcotics. “You are talking about blatant drug dealing. It's about substance use in violation of federal law,” Wadler said in the past. “This is not philanthropy and this is not some do-gooding. This is drug dealing.”