Victor Conte, who sold undetectable steroids to elite athletes in baseball and track and field, dies at 75
Victor Conte, who has died decades ago, was the architect of a scheme to deliver undetectable performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes, including baseball stars Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and Olympic track and field champion Marion Jones. He is 75 years old.
SNAC System, the sports nutrition company he founded, said in a social media post that Conte died on Monday. It did not reveal the cause of his death.
A federal investigation into Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative, another company founded by Conte, resulted in convictions against Jones, elite sprint cyclist Tammy Thomas, former NFL defensive lineman Dana Stubblefield, as well as coaches, distributors, trainers, chemists and attorneys.
Conte, who is serving four months in federal prison for dealing steroids, has spoken publicly about his famous former client. He said on television that he saw Jones, a three-time Olympic medalist, injecting himself with human growth hormone, but never implicated Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.
This investigation led to the book The Shadow Game. A week after the book was published in 2006, baseball commissioner Bud Selig hired former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to investigate steroids.
steroid era
Mitchell reported that Conte said he sold steroids known as “Cream” and “Clear” and provided advice on their use to dozens of elite athletes, including Giambi, a five-time major league All-Star.
“The illegal use of performance-enhancing substances poses a serious threat to the integrity of the game,” Mitchell reported. “The widespread use of such substances by players unfairly disadvantages honest athletes who refuse to use them and raises questions about the validity of baseball records.”
Mitchell said the problem didn’t arise overnight. Mitchell said everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades – including commissioners, club officials, players’ associations and players – bears some responsibility for what he calls the “steroid era.”
The federal investigation into BALCO began when a tax agent went through the company’s trash.
In 2005, Conte pleaded guilty before trial to two of the 42 charges against him. Six of the 11 convicted were arrested for lying to grand jurors, federal investigators or courts.
Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson pleaded guilty to charges of distributing steroids due to his ties to BALCO. Anderson was sentenced to three months in prison and three months of home confinement.
Bonds went on trial in 2011 on charges of lying to a grand jury about doping. Four years later, prosecutors dropped the case after the government decided not to appeal the overturned obstruction of justice conviction to the Supreme Court.
A seven-time National League MVP and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds ended his career with 762 home runs after the 2007 season, surpassing Hank Aaron’s record of 755 from 1954-76. Bonds has denied intentional doping but was never inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Bonds did not respond to an email seeking comment.
“Yes, athletes cheat to win, but government agents and prosecutors also cheat to win,” Conte told The Associated Press in a 2010 interview. He also questioned whether the outcome of such legal cases justified the effort.
Conte’s attorney, Robert Hawley, did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment. SNAC System did not respond to messages sent through the company’s website.
Be provocative in your role
After serving time in a minimum-security prison that he described as “like a man’s sanctuary,” Conte got back into business in 2007, reviving the nutritional supplement business he started two decades earlier called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning, or the SNAC System. He housed it in the same building that once housed BALCO in Burlingame, California.
Conte still expresses disdain for his central role in supplying designer steroids to elite athletes. He insisted he was simply helping to “level the playing field” in a world already overrun with cheaters.
To Dr. Gary Wadler, then a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Conte may have been pushing cocaine or heroin.
“You’re talking about drug trafficking, which is completely illegal. You’re talking about drug use in violation of federal law,” Wadler said in 2007. “This is not charity, this is not doing good. This is drug dealing.”
The hallways of the SNAC System are lined with game jerseys and signed photos of professional athletes, including track and field stars Tim Montgomery, Kelli White and CJ Hunter, all of whom were sanctioned for doping.
Conte wears a Rolex watch and has a Bentley and a Mercedes parked in front of his building. In 2007, he told The Associated Press that he would not speed.
“I’m a person who no longer breaks the law,” he said. “But I still like to see fast.”
Years later, he met Dick Pound, then president of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
“As someone who has been able to evade his system for so long, it is easy for me to point out the many loopholes that exist and propose concrete steps to improve the overall effectiveness of his program,” Conte said in a statement after the meeting.
He said some bad decisions he made in the past qualified him to contribute to anti-doping efforts.
The SNAC System called Conte an “anti-doping advocate” in a social media post announcing his death.
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Associated Press writer Jenny McCauley contributed to this report.
