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The man behind the scheme, who devised a system to distribute undetectable performance-enhancing drugs to top competitors such as baseball greats Giambi and Bonds and track and field star Marion Jones in the past, has passed away. He reached 75 years.

Federal Investigation and Convictions

An official inquiry regarding another company set up by him, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), led to the convictions of Marion Jones, top track cyclist Thomas, and retired NFL player Dana Stubblefield, in addition to coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Open Discussions and Sentencing

The Balco founder, who served a third of a year in a federal facility for illegal drug sales, discussed frankly about his well-known clients. He appeared on television to claim he had observed decorated Olympian Marion Jones inject herself with HGH, but never directly pointing the finger at Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.

The Mitchell Report

The federal case led to the publication titled Game of Shadows. Just days following the book's publication in 2006, baseball Commissioner Selig hired political figure Mitchell to look into PED use.

He admitted he provided steroids referred to as “the cream” and “the clear” and coached on their usage to numerous top performers, such as Giambi, a multiple-time All-Star, according to the report.

“The illegal use of PEDs poses a serious threat to the honesty of the competition,” the Mitchell report concluded. “Prevalent consumption by athletes of these compounds unfairly disadvantages the those who refuse to cheat who refuse to use them and creates doubts about the legitimacy of baseball records.”

The report noted the challenges didn’t develop overnight. Mitchell claimed all parties in baseball in the previous twenty years – including leaders, club officials, the union and players – shared some responsibility for what he labeled the PED epoch.

How It Began

The government's case into the company started when a tax agent digging through the company’s trash. Conte ultimately admitted guilt to a couple of the numerous counts filed against him in the mid-2000s prior to court proceedings. Six of the defendants sentenced were convicted for misleading federal investigators.

Related Cases

Bonds’ personal trainer Anderson, pleaded guilty to steroid distribution charges linked to his Balco connections. He received a sentence to 90 days in incarceration and three months of restricted movement.

His Court Proceedings

Bonds was indicted for providing false statements to a federal jury about receiving banned substances and faced a trial in that year. Prosecutors dropped the case down the line when the prosecutors opted not to challenge an reversed conviction to the federal apex court.

A seven-time National League MVP and star performer, he ended his career after the 2007 campaign with 762 homers, breaking the record of that number that Hank Aaron set from the 1950s to 1970s. He claimed he did not knowingly using PEDs but has never been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Conte's Post-Prison Life

The former convict stated in an interview in a past conversation that “sportspeople break rules to succeed, but the officials and lawyers also bend the rules.” He also questioned whether the results in such legal cases merited the work.

After serving his sentence, Conte got back in business in that year by resuscitating a nutritional supplements business he had launched two decades earlier called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He set up shop in the same building that was home to Balco in Burlingame, California.

Continued Justification

Conte stayed unrepentant about his major involvement in distributing tailored drugs to elite athletes. He claimed he simply helped “level the playing field” in a world teeming with cheaters.

Critical Perspectives

To an expert, a then-member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, he could be compared to pushing hard drugs. “It concerns blatant drug dealing. It's about using drugs in defiance of legal codes,” Wadler said in 2007. “This is not philanthropy and this is not some do-gooding. It's illegal sales.”