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The orchestrator of the plot, who engineered a operation to provide undetectable banned substances to elite sports stars featuring baseball icons Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and sprinting gold medalist Jones years back, has died. He was 75.

Official Inquiry and Criminal Cases

A national probe of an additional venture established by Conte, the Bay Area lab, led to the guilty verdicts of Jones, top track cyclist Tammy Thomas, and ex-pro football defender Dana Stubblefield, in addition to coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Public Statements and Prison Time

Conte, who served a third of a year in a federal facility for dealing steroids, spoke openly about his high-profile athletes. He was featured on TV to assert he had observed triple Olympic champion Jones self-administer with HGH, but never directly pointing the finger at Barry Bonds, the baseball star.

Sport's Official Review

The federal case inspired the publication titled Game of Shadows. Just days following the release of the book in that year, baseball Commissioner Selig brought on former senate majority leader George Mitchell to investigate steroids.

He admitted he provided steroids referred to as “the cream” and “the clear” and advised on their application to dozens of professional sportspeople, like Jason Giambi, a star player, the Mitchell report said.

Employing PEDs represents a major risk to the fairness of the competition,” the report stated. “Broad usage by athletes of these compounds puts at a disadvantage the honest athletes who decline to take them and raises questions about the legitimacy of historical stats.”

Mitchell indicated the issues didn’t develop overnight. The report emphasized everyone involved in professional baseball in the prior two decades – including leaders, team executives, the players’ association and athletes themselves – bore partial blame for what he called “the steroids era”.

Case Inception

The official probe into the laboratory started when a IRS investigator digging through the business refuse. The defendant ultimately admitted guilt to a pair of the 42 charges he faced in 2005 ahead of a court case. Six of the defendants sentenced were caught deceiving the court.

Further Legal Actions

The athlete's coach Anderson, admitted guilt to steroid distribution charges linked to his Balco connections. Anderson was sentenced to three months in prison and three months of house arrest.

His Court Proceedings

Bonds was indicted for providing false statements to a grand jury about receiving performance-enhancing drugs and faced a trial in that year. The case was dismissed the charges four years later when the prosecutors opted not to challenge an reversed conviction to the federal apex court.

A multiple MVP winner and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds ended his career after the 2007 season with a record home run tally, breaking the record of that number that Hank Aaron set from 1954-76. He claimed he did not consciously consuming PEDs but has not been voted to the sport's hall of honor.

Conte's Post-Prison Life

Conte stated in an interview in a past conversation that “competitors do cheat to triumph, but the government agents and prosecutors cheat to win, too.” He also questioned whether the outcomes in such legal cases were worth the resources.

Post-incarceration, he returned to work in that year by rebooting a nutritional supplements business he had started years before called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He set up shop in the identical location that once housed Balco in Burlingame, California.

Unapologetic Views

He stayed unrepentant about his major involvement in providing tailored drugs to top sports stars. He claimed he simply helped “balance the odds” in a sports environment teeming with doping athletes.

Critical Perspectives

To a WADA member, a former participant of the global anti-doping body, he may as well have been distributing illegal narcotics. “You are talking about totally illegal drug trafficking. You are talking about using drugs in violation of federal law,” Wadler said in 2007. “It's not a good deed and not a benevolent act. It's illegal sales.”