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The orchestrator of the plot, who masterminded a plan to distribute undetectable PEDs to elite sports stars including baseball greats Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and track and field star Jones decades ago, has passed away. He was 75.

Official Inquiry and Criminal Cases

The federal government's probe of another company set up by him, Balco, resulted in the convictions of Marion Jones, elite sprint cyclist Thomas, and ex-pro football defender Dana Stubblefield, as well as various support personnel and professionals.

Public Statements and Sentencing

Conte, who spent several months in a penitentiary for steroid distribution, talked publicly about his famous former clients. He was featured on TV to claim he had observed decorated Olympian Jones inject herself with growth hormones, but never directly pointing the finger at Barry Bonds, the baseball star.

Sport's Official Review

The federal case resulted in the book Game of Shadows. Just days following the release of the book in 2006, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig hired political figure George Mitchell to examine doping in baseball.

Conte stated he distributed steroids referred to as “the cream” and “the clear” and advised on their use to dozens of elite athletes, like Giambi, a star player, as per the investigation.

“The illegal use of banned drugs is a significant danger to the integrity of the game,” the Mitchell report concluded. “Broad usage by athletes of these compounds unfairly disadvantages the clean players who avoid them and leads to skepticism about the legitimacy of historical stats.”

Mitchell indicated the challenges were not sudden. The report emphasized each participant in baseball in the previous twenty years – including leaders, team executives, the players’ association and players – shared some responsibility for what he termed the PED epoch.

Investigation Origins

The federal investigation into the laboratory was initiated by a tax agent searching the company’s trash. He ended up pleading guilty to a pair of the 42 charges against him in 2005 before a trial. Several of the defendants sentenced were ensnared for deceiving federal investigators.

Related Cases

Bonds’ personal trainer Anderson, confessed to illegal substance sales arising from his Balco connections. The court gave him to three months in prison and an equal period of home confinement.

His Court Proceedings

Bonds was charged with deceiving a grand jury about using performance-enhancing drugs and went on trial in that year. The government abandoned his case down the line when the prosecutors opted not to appeal an overturned ruling to the highest court.

A decorated player and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds retired after the 2007 season with 762 homers, breaking the milestone of Aaron's total that Hank Aaron established from 1954-76. He claimed he did not intentionally taking performance-enhancing drugs but has never been elected to the sport's hall of honor.

After Incarceration

He stated in an interview in a 2010 interview that “competitors do cheat to succeed, but the federal representatives cheat to win, too.” He doubted whether the results in such legal cases justified the effort.

After serving his sentence, he got back in business in that year by resuscitating a health products venture he had launched years before called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He located it in the same building that previously contained Balco in Burlingame.

Defiant Stance

Conte stayed unrepentant about his central role in doling out custom PEDs to top sports stars. He maintained he simply helped “level the playing field” in a world teeming with doping athletes.

Critical Perspectives

To a WADA member, a then-member of the WADA, Conte could be compared to distributing illegal narcotics. “You are talking about blatant drug dealing. It's about using drugs in breach of national statutes,” he stated in 2007. “It's not a good deed and this is not some do-gooding. This is drug dealing.”