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Victor Conte, who engineered a system to provide hard-to-detect PEDs to professional athletes such as baseball greats Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and Olympic track champion Jones years back, is deceased. His age was 75.

Federal Investigation and Convictions

An official inquiry regarding an additional venture set up by him, the Bay Area lab, culminated in the convictions of Jones, competitive biker Tammy Thomas, and former NFL defensive lineman Dana Stubblefield, along with coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Open Discussions and Sentencing

Conte, who completed several months in federal prison for illegal drug sales, discussed frankly about his high-profile athletes. He went on TV to state he had observed three-time Olympic medalist Jones use a syringe with HGH, but consistently avoided incriminating Barry Bonds, the Giants power hitter.

The Mitchell Report

This probe inspired the publication Game of Shadows. A week after the release of the book in the mid-2000s, baseball Commissioner Selig hired former senate majority leader Mitchell to examine doping in baseball.

He admitted he sold steroids known as certain undetectable drugs and advised on their application to many professional sportspeople, such as Giambi, a five-time major league All-Star, the Mitchell report said.

Using PEDs poses a serious threat to the honesty of the game,” the report stated. “Broad usage by competitors of these drugs harms the clean players who avoid them and creates doubts about the validity of historical stats.”

The report noted the problems took time to emerge. He said everyone involved in professional baseball in the preceding decades – covering commissioners, management, the representative body and athletes themselves – were partly accountable for what he called “the steroids era”.

How It Began

The official probe into the laboratory started when a tax agent examining the company’s trash. He eventually confessed to a pair of the 42 charges filed against him in 2005 prior to court proceedings. Several of the 11 convicted people were caught deceiving federal investigators.

Associated Convictions

The athlete's coach Greg Anderson, confessed to illegal substance sales linked to his ties to the lab. The court gave him to a quarter year in jail and an equal period of house arrest.

His Court Proceedings

The baseball legend was accused of deceiving a grand jury about receiving PEDs and went on trial in 2011. Prosecutors dropped the charges four years later when the government decided not to challenge an reversed conviction to the supreme court.

A decorated player and star performer, he retired after the that season with a record home run tally, surpassing the milestone of 755 that Hank Aaron set from his career. Bonds denied knowingly using banned substances but has not been voted to the Hall of Fame.

Conte's Post-Prison Life

He told the Associated Press in a past conversation that “yes, athletes cheat to succeed, but the officials and lawyers also bend the rules.” He wondered whether the outcomes in such proceedings justified the effort.

Following his prison term, Conte resumed operations in that year by reviving a health products venture he had founded previously called his supplements brand. He set up shop in the very same place that previously contained Balco in Burlingame.

Continued Justification

Conte remained defiant about his central role in providing custom PEDs to elite athletes. He maintained he simply helped “balance the odds” in a arena already rife with cheaters.

Expert Opinions

To an expert, a former participant of the WADA, he may as well have been selling cocaine or heroin. “It concerns unlawful substance distribution. You are talking about substance use in breach of national statutes,” he stated in 2007. “This is not philanthropy and this is not some do-gooding. It's trafficking.”