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The man behind the scheme, who devised a operation to provide hard-to-detect PEDs to professional athletes including MLB legends Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and Olympic track champion Marion Jones decades ago, has passed away. He reached 75 years.

Federal Investigation and Criminal Cases

An official investigation into another company established by Conte, the Bay Area lab, resulted in the guilty verdicts of Marion Jones, competitive biker Tammy Thomas, and retired NFL player Stubblefield, as well as coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Open Discussions and Prison Time

He, who served four months in a federal facility for dealing steroids, talked publicly about his well-known clients. He went on television to state he had observed decorated Olympian Jones inject herself with HGH, but consistently avoided pointing the finger at Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.

Sport's Official Review

This probe resulted in the publication titled Game of Shadows. A week after the publication date in the mid-2000s, baseball Commissioner Selig brought on political figure George Mitchell to look into PED use.

He revealed he sold steroids called certain undetectable drugs and guided their use to many elite athletes, like Giambi, a multiple-time All-Star, the Mitchell report said.

“The illegal use of performance-enhancing substances represents a major risk to the integrity of the game,” the findings emphasized. “Widespread use by athletes of these drugs unfairly disadvantages the those who refuse to cheat who decline to take them and leads to skepticism about the validity of sporting achievements.”

Mitchell indicated the issues took time to emerge. He said all parties in professional baseball in the preceding decades – including commissioners, club officials, the players’ association and players – bore partial blame for what he termed the PED epoch.

Investigation Origins

The government's case into Balco was initiated by a IRS investigator searching the company’s trash. The defendant ended up pleading guilty to a pair of the numerous counts he faced in that year before a trial. Six of the 11 convicted people were caught lying to grand jurors.

Related Cases

The athlete's coach Greg Anderson, confessed to drug dealing counts arising from his ties to the lab. He received a sentence to a quarter year in prison and an equal period of restricted movement.

The Slugger's Case

The home run king was charged with deceiving a grand jury about obtaining banned substances and faced a trial in that year. Prosecutors dropped the case after several years when the authorities chose not to challenge an overturned obstruction of justice conviction to the highest court.

A seven-time National League MVP and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds ended his career after the 2007 season with 762 home runs, breaking the record of that number that Aaron achieved from 1954-76. The athlete refuted intentionally taking performance-enhancing drugs but has never been elected to the sport's hall of honor.

Later Years

Conte remarked to the press in a 2010 discussion that “sportspeople break rules to succeed, but the government agents and prosecutors cheat to win, too.” He also questioned whether the conclusions in such proceedings justified the effort.

Following his prison term, Conte returned to work in 2007 by resuscitating a nutritional supplements business he had launched years before called his supplements brand. He operated in the same building that previously contained Balco in Burlingame.

Defiant Stance

Conte continued to justify about his major involvement in providing designer steroids to top sports stars. He claimed he simply helped “balance the odds” in a world full of rule-breakers.

Expert Opinions

To an expert, a then-member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, he could be compared to pushing illegal narcotics. “It concerns blatant drug dealing. This refers to substance use in violation of federal law,” Wadler said in that period. “It's not a good deed and not a benevolent act. This is drug dealing.”