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Victor Conte, who devised a operation to provide hard-to-detect banned substances to elite sports stars featuring baseball icons Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and sprinting gold medalist Marion Jones years back, has died. He was 75.

Federal Investigation and Criminal Cases

An official probe of another company set up by him, the Bay Area lab, led to the guilty verdicts of Marion Jones, competitive biker Tammy Thomas, and former NFL defensive lineman Stubblefield, as well as coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Open Discussions and Sentencing

The Balco founder, who completed four months in a penitentiary for illegal drug sales, discussed frankly about his famous former clients. He went on TV to state he had observed decorated Olympian Jones inject herself with HGH, but consistently avoided implicating Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.

Baseball's Investigation

This probe resulted in the book Game of Shadows. Just days following the book's publication in 2006, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig appointed ex-senator George Mitchell to examine doping in baseball.

He revealed he provided steroids known as certain undetectable drugs and guided their application to dozens of professional sportspeople, including Jason Giambi, a five-time major league All-Star, the Mitchell report said.

Employing banned drugs represents a major risk to the fairness of the sport,” the report stated. “Prevalent consumption by players of these compounds unfairly disadvantages the honest athletes who avoid them and creates doubts about the legitimacy of historical stats.”

The report noted the problems were not sudden. He said everyone involved in baseball in the previous twenty years – covering commissioners, club officials, the union and athletes themselves – bore partial blame for what he termed the PED epoch.

How It Began

The government's case into the company started when a revenue officer examining the corporate garbage. Conte eventually confessed to a pair of the 42 charges he faced in 2005 ahead of a court case. Six of the individuals found guilty were ensnared for misleading federal investigators.

Associated Convictions

His fitness instructor Anderson, admitted guilt to steroid distribution charges linked to his involvement with Balco. He received a sentence to three months in jail and an equal period of home confinement.

Bonds' Legal Battles

Bonds was charged with lying to a grand jury about obtaining PEDs and went on trial in that year. The government abandoned the case four years later when the government decided not to contest an overturned ruling to the supreme court.

A multiple MVP winner and star performer, he concluded his playing days after the that season with a record home run tally, breaking the record of that number that Aaron established from his career. He claimed he did not intentionally taking performance-enhancing drugs but has not been voted to the Hall of Fame.

After Incarceration

The former convict stated in an interview in a 2010 interview that “yes, athletes cheat to succeed, but the officials and lawyers cheat to win, too.” He wondered whether the conclusions in such legal cases merited the work.

Post-incarceration, Conte returned to work in 2007 by resuscitating a supplements company he had founded two decades earlier called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He located it in the very same place that previously contained his former lab in Burlingame.

Defiant Stance

Conte stayed unrepentant about his central role in providing designer steroids to elite athletes. He maintained he simply helped “level the playing field” in a sports environment already rife with doping athletes.

Expert Opinions

To an expert, a at the time a member of the global anti-doping body, Conte was essentially pushing hard drugs. “You are talking about totally illegal drug trafficking. You are talking about using drugs in breach of national statutes,” the doctor remarked in that period. “This is not philanthropy and it's not altruistic. This is drug dealing.”