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The man behind the scheme, who engineered a system to supply hard-to-detect PEDs to elite sports stars such as baseball icons Giambi and Bonds and Olympic track champion Marion Jones in the past, has died. He was 75.

Government Probe and Convictions

The federal government's inquiry regarding another company Conte founded, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), led to the convictions of Marion Jones, competitive biker Tammy Thomas, and former NFL defensive lineman Dana Stubblefield, along with coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Public Statements and Legal Consequences

He, who served several months in a federal facility for steroid distribution, talked publicly about his high-profile athletes. He appeared on television to state he had seen three-time Olympic medalist Marion Jones self-administer with HGH, but never directly implicating Barry Bonds, the Giants power hitter.

The Mitchell Report

This probe led to the publication Game of Shadows. Shortly after the book's publication in that year, MLB commissioner Selig brought on former senate majority leader George Mitchell to investigate steroids.

He admitted he sold steroids known as certain undetectable drugs and guided their use to dozens of top performers, including Giambi, a multiple-time All-Star, the Mitchell report said.

Employing banned drugs represents a major risk to the fairness of the game,” the report stated. “Broad usage by athletes of these drugs unfairly disadvantages the honest athletes who avoid them and leads to skepticism about the accuracy of historical stats.”

Mitchell indicated the issues were not sudden. Mitchell claimed all parties in professional baseball in the prior two decades – covering commissioners, management, the union and athletes themselves – were partly accountable for what he called the doping period.

Case Inception

The official probe into the company started when a tax agent searching the company’s trash. He ultimately admitted guilt to a pair of the multiple accusations he faced in the mid-2000s before a trial. Six of the defendants sentenced were caught lying to federal investigators.

Further Legal Actions

Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson, pleaded guilty to illegal substance sales linked to his Balco connections. Anderson was sentenced to a quarter year in prison and three months of home confinement.

Bonds' Legal Battles

Bonds was indicted for lying to a federal jury about using PEDs and faced a trial in 2011. Prosecutors dropped the case after several years when the authorities chose not to challenge an overturned ruling to the federal apex court.

A decorated player and frequent All-Star, he concluded his playing days after the that season with 762 home runs, breaking the milestone of that number that Hank Aaron achieved from 1954-76. The athlete refuted consciously consuming performance-enhancing drugs but has failed to gain entry to the sport's hall of honor.

Conte's Post-Prison Life

Conte remarked to the press in a 2010 interview that “competitors do cheat to win, but the government agents and prosecutors also bend the rules.” He doubted whether the outcomes in such legal cases merited the work.

Following his prison term, he returned to work in the late 2000s by resuscitating a supplements company he had launched years before called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He set up shop in the same building that once housed the original company in Burlingame.

Continued Justification

Conte stayed unrepentant about his central role in distributing custom PEDs to top sports stars. He maintained he simply helped “level the playing field” in a world teeming with doping athletes.

Expert Opinions

To Dr Gary Wadler, a at the time a member of the global anti-doping body, Conte could be compared to distributing cocaine or heroin. “It concerns totally illegal drug trafficking. This refers to drug consumption in breach of national statutes,” he stated in 2007. “It's not a good deed and it's not altruistic. It's trafficking.”