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The man behind the scheme, who engineered a system to supply hard-to-detect performance-enhancing drugs to elite sports stars such as MLB legends Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and Olympic track champion Jones decades ago, has died. He was 75.

Government Probe and Legal Outcomes

The federal government's probe of another company set up by him, the Bay Area lab, resulted in the guilty verdicts of Marion Jones, top track cyclist Tammy Thomas, and retired NFL player Dana Stubblefield, in addition to various support personnel and professionals.

Conte's Admissions and Legal Consequences

The Balco founder, who completed a third of a year in a federal facility for dealing steroids, talked publicly about his famous former clients. He was featured on television to assert he had witnessed triple Olympic champion Marion Jones inject herself with growth hormones, but consistently avoided implicating Bonds, the baseball star.

Sport's Official Review

This probe inspired the book Game of Shadows. A week after the release of the book in that year, MLB commissioner Selig brought on former senate majority leader Mitchell to investigate steroids.

Conte stated he sold steroids known as certain undetectable drugs and advised on their usage to many top performers, like Giambi, a five-time major league All-Star, according to the report.

Using banned drugs poses a serious threat to the honesty of the competition,” the report stated. “Prevalent consumption by players of these compounds puts at a disadvantage the honest athletes who refuse to use them and leads to skepticism about the validity of historical stats.”

The report noted the challenges didn’t develop overnight. The report emphasized all parties in professional baseball in the preceding decades – covering commissioners, club officials, the union and athletes themselves – shared some responsibility for what he called the doping period.

Case Inception

The government's case into Balco began with a IRS investigator searching the business refuse. He eventually confessed to a pair of the 42 charges he faced in the mid-2000s prior to court proceedings. Six of the defendants sentenced were convicted for lying to grand jurors.

Related Cases

His fitness instructor Anderson, admitted guilt to drug dealing counts linked to his involvement with Balco. Anderson was sentenced to 90 days in prison and the same duration of home confinement.

The Slugger's Case

The baseball legend was charged with lying to a federal jury about using performance-enhancing drugs and went on trial in that year. The government abandoned the case down the line when the government decided not to challenge an overturned obstruction of justice conviction to the federal apex court.

A seven-time National League MVP and 14-time All-Star outfielder, he retired after the 2007 season with a record home run tally, breaking the milestone of Aaron's total that Aaron set from the 1950s to 1970s. The athlete refuted knowingly using banned substances but has failed to gain entry to the sport's hall of honor.

After Incarceration

He stated in an interview in a 2010 interview that “competitors do cheat to triumph, but the federal representatives cheat to win, too.” He wondered whether the results in these trials were worth the resources.

Following his prison term, he got back in business in that year by rebooting a nutritional supplements business he had launched previously called his supplements brand. He operated in the very same place that previously contained Balco in Burlingame, California.

Continued Justification

Conte remained defiant about his key part in doling out tailored drugs to elite athletes. He argued he simply helped “even the competition” in a sports environment full of rule-breakers.

Outside Views

To a WADA member, a then-member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, he may as well have been pushing illegal narcotics. “This involves totally illegal drug trafficking. It's about drug consumption in breach of national statutes,” he stated in the past. “This isn't charity and not a benevolent act. It's illegal sales.”