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Victor Conte, who devised a operation to distribute undetectable banned substances to professional athletes such as MLB legends Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and track and field star Marion Jones years back, has died. He was 75.

Official Inquiry and Legal Outcomes

A national probe of a separate firm Conte founded, Balco, resulted in the convictions of Jones, elite sprint cyclist Thomas, and former NFL defensive lineman Stubblefield, in addition to coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Open Discussions and Prison Time

The Balco founder, who served four months in federal prison for dealing steroids, discussed frankly about his famous former clients. He was featured on television to assert he had observed triple Olympic champion Jones inject herself with growth hormones, but consistently avoided incriminating Barry Bonds, the Giants power hitter.

Sport's Official Review

The investigation led to the volume Game of Shadows. A week after the book's publication in the mid-2000s, MLB commissioner Bud Selig brought on ex-senator Mitchell to investigate steroids.

He revealed he distributed steroids called two specific substances and coached on their application to dozens of elite athletes, such as Giambi, a five-time major league All-Star, according to the report.

Using PEDs poses a serious threat to the integrity of the sport,” the Mitchell report concluded. “Broad usage by athletes of such substances harms the those who refuse to cheat who avoid them and leads to skepticism about the legitimacy of sporting achievements.”

The report noted the problems didn’t develop overnight. Mitchell claimed each participant in baseball in the previous twenty years – covering leaders, management, the representative body and players – shared some responsibility for what he called “the steroids era”.

How It Began

The federal investigation into the laboratory began with a tax agent digging through the corporate garbage. The defendant ultimately admitted guilt to a pair of the multiple accusations filed against him in 2005 prior to court proceedings. Several of the defendants sentenced were convicted for lying to the court.

Further Legal Actions

Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson, pleaded guilty to steroid distribution charges linked to his Balco connections. The court gave him to three months in prison and the same duration of restricted movement.

His Court Proceedings

Bonds was accused of deceiving a grand jury about using PEDs and stood trial in 2011. The government abandoned his case four years later when the prosecutors opted not to appeal an overturned obstruction of justice conviction to the federal apex court.

A seven-time National League MVP and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds concluded his playing days after the that season with 762 home runs, exceeding the milestone of Aaron's total that Hank Aaron achieved from the 1950s to 1970s. Bonds denied intentionally taking performance-enhancing drugs but has never been elected to the Hall of Fame.

After Incarceration

He told the Associated Press in a past conversation that “competitors do cheat to win, but the government agents and prosecutors also bend the rules.” He wondered whether the results in such legal cases justified the effort.

After serving his sentence, he returned to work in 2007 by resuscitating a supplements company he had started two decades earlier called SNAC System. He operated in the same building that once housed the original company in Burlingame.

Continued Justification

Conte stayed unrepentant about his central role in distributing designer steroids to professional competitors. He maintained he simply helped “even the competition” in a sports environment full of doping athletes.

Expert Opinions

To Dr Gary Wadler, a then-member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, he was essentially distributing hard drugs. “This involves blatant drug dealing. You are talking about using drugs in defiance of legal codes,” the doctor remarked in the past. “This is not philanthropy and this is not some do-gooding. This is drug dealing.”