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Victor Conte, who devised a plan to provide hard-to-detect PEDs to top competitors including MLB legends Giambi and Bonds and Olympic track champion Marion Jones decades ago, has died. He was 75.

Official Inquiry and Convictions

A national inquiry regarding another company set up by him, Balco, led to the guilty verdicts of Jones, top track cyclist Tammy Thomas, and retired NFL player Stubblefield, along with coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Open Discussions and Legal Consequences

Conte, who spent four months in a federal facility for illegal drug sales, discussed frankly about his high-profile athletes. He went on TV to assert he had witnessed decorated Olympian Jones inject herself with human growth hormones, but never directly implicating Bonds, the baseball star.

The Mitchell Report

This probe led to the publication Game of Shadows. Just days following the publication date in the mid-2000s, the sport's chief Selig brought on former senate majority leader George Mitchell to look into PED use.

He revealed he distributed steroids known as two specific substances and advised on their application to many elite athletes, including Giambi, a star player, the Mitchell report said.

Employing PEDs represents a major risk to the fairness of the competition,” the Mitchell report concluded. “Broad usage by players of such substances unfairly disadvantages the honest athletes who refuse to use them and raises questions about the legitimacy of baseball records.”

The report noted the issues didn’t develop overnight. He said everyone involved in baseball in the preceding decades – covering leaders, management, the representative body and players – bore partial blame for what he termed the doping period.

Investigation Origins

The federal investigation into the company was initiated by a IRS investigator examining the business refuse. The defendant ultimately admitted guilt to a pair of the 42 charges he faced in the mid-2000s prior to court proceedings. Six of the 11 convicted people were convicted for deceiving federal investigators.

Further Legal Actions

His fitness instructor Greg Anderson, confessed to illegal substance sales arising from his involvement with Balco. The court gave him to 90 days in jail and three months of house arrest.

The Slugger's Case

The home run king was indicted for lying to a investigative body about receiving banned substances and went on trial in that year. The government abandoned his case after several years when the government decided not to challenge an reversed conviction to the federal apex court.

A seven-time National League MVP and 14-time All-Star outfielder, he retired after the 2007 campaign with 762 home runs, exceeding the milestone of 755 that Hank Aaron established from his career. The athlete refuted intentionally taking PEDs but has not been voted to the Hall of Fame.

Conte's Post-Prison Life

The former convict told the Associated Press in a past conversation that “sportspeople break rules to win, but the federal representatives also bend the rules.” He wondered whether the outcomes in such legal cases were worth the resources.

After serving his sentence, Conte returned to work in the late 2000s by reviving a supplements company he had launched years before called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He set up shop in the very same place that previously contained the original company in Burlingame, California.

Defiant Stance

He continued to justify about his key part in providing designer steroids to professional competitors. He claimed he simply helped “balance the odds” in a world teeming with doping athletes.

Outside Views

To an expert, a former participant of the WADA, he was essentially distributing illegal narcotics. “It concerns unlawful substance distribution. It's about drug consumption in breach of national statutes,” Wadler said in that period. “This isn't charity and it's not altruistic. It's trafficking.”