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Victor Conte, who engineered a operation to provide hard-to-detect banned substances to professional athletes including baseball icons Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and sprinting gold medalist Jones decades ago, has died. He was 75.

Government Probe and Legal Outcomes

A national probe of an additional venture set up by him, the Bay Area lab, culminated in the criminal findings of Jones, top track cyclist Tammy Thomas, and former NFL defensive lineman Dana Stubblefield, in addition to trainers, suppliers, chemists, attorneys, and coaches.

Conte's Admissions and Sentencing

He, who completed four months in federal prison for steroid distribution, talked publicly about his well-known clients. He was featured on television to state he had seen three-time Olympic medalist Marion Jones use a syringe with growth hormones, but never directly pointing the finger at Bonds, the Giants power hitter.

The Mitchell Report

The investigation resulted in the publication titled Game of Shadows. Shortly after the book's publication in that year, baseball Commissioner Selig hired political figure George Mitchell to look into PED use.

He revealed he distributed steroids called certain undetectable drugs and coached on their application to numerous elite athletes, like Giambi, a star player, as per the investigation.

Employing banned drugs represents a major risk to the honesty of the competition,” the findings emphasized. “Widespread use by players of these compounds puts at a disadvantage the clean players who refuse to use them and creates doubts about the validity of sporting achievements.”

The report noted the issues took time to emerge. The report emphasized all parties in the sport in the preceding decades – covering leaders, club officials, the players’ association and players – shared some responsibility for what he termed the PED epoch.

How It Began

The government's case into the company began with a revenue officer searching the company’s trash. Conte ended up pleading guilty to a pair of the numerous counts filed against him in 2005 prior to court proceedings. Six of the defendants sentenced were convicted for lying to federal investigators.

Associated Convictions

Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson, pleaded guilty to illegal substance sales arising from his ties to the lab. He received a sentence to three months in prison and three months of home confinement.

Bonds' Legal Battles

The home run king was charged with lying to a grand jury about obtaining PEDs and stood trial in that year. The government abandoned his case four years later when the government decided not to appeal an overturned ruling to the federal apex court.

A decorated player and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds ended his career after the that season with a record home run tally, exceeding the mark of 755 that Aaron set from his career. Bonds denied knowingly using banned substances but has never been elected to the sport's hall of honor.

Later Years

Conte stated in an interview in a past conversation that “competitors do cheat to win, but the federal representatives engage in misconduct as well.” He also questioned whether the results in such proceedings merited the work.

After serving his sentence, he resumed operations in the late 2000s by rebooting a supplements company he had started two decades earlier called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He operated in the identical location that was home to his former lab in Burlingame, California.

Continued Justification

The controversial figure stayed unrepentant about his major involvement in distributing custom PEDs to elite athletes. He claimed he simply helped “balance the odds” in a sports environment full of rule-breakers.

Outside Views

To an expert, a then-member of the global anti-doping body, Conte was essentially selling cocaine or heroin. “It concerns blatant drug dealing. It's about drug consumption in breach of national statutes,” the doctor remarked in the past. “It's not a good deed and not a benevolent act. It's illegal sales.”