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The man behind the scheme, who engineered a system to distribute hard-to-detect banned substances to top competitors including baseball icons Giambi and Bonds and track and field star Jones in the past, has died. He reached 75 years.

Official Inquiry and Convictions

An official probe of a separate firm set up by him, the Bay Area lab, led to the convictions of Jones, elite sprint cyclist Thomas, and ex-pro football defender Stubblefield, as well as trainers, suppliers, chemists, attorneys, and coaches.

Open Discussions and Prison Time

Conte, who completed four months in a federal facility for steroid distribution, spoke openly about his high-profile athletes. He went on television to assert he had seen triple Olympic champion Marion Jones self-administer with HGH, but consistently avoided incriminating Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.

Sport's Official Review

The investigation inspired the publication Game of Shadows. Just days following the publication date in 2006, the sport's chief Bud Selig appointed political figure George Mitchell to investigate steroids.

Conte stated he sold steroids called certain undetectable drugs and coached on their use to numerous elite athletes, including Giambi, a multiple-time All-Star, as per the investigation.

Using PEDs poses a serious threat to the integrity of the competition,” the Mitchell report concluded. “Broad usage by athletes of these drugs puts at a disadvantage the clean players who avoid them and creates doubts about the legitimacy of sporting achievements.”

The report noted the issues took time to emerge. The report emphasized all parties in baseball in the prior two decades – covering leaders, management, the players’ association and athletes themselves – shared some responsibility for what he called the PED epoch.

Case Inception

The government's case into Balco started when a tax agent examining the company’s trash. He eventually confessed to a pair of the multiple accusations filed against him in the mid-2000s prior to court proceedings. Half a dozen of the defendants sentenced were caught lying to grand jurors.

Related Cases

The athlete's coach Anderson, pleaded guilty to steroid distribution charges stemming from his Balco connections. The court gave him to 90 days in prison and an equal period of home confinement.

His Court Proceedings

The baseball legend was indicted for lying to a grand jury about obtaining PEDs and faced a trial in that year. Prosecutors dropped the charges after several years when the authorities chose not to appeal an overturned ruling to the federal apex court.

A multiple MVP winner and 14-time All-Star outfielder, he concluded his playing days after the 2007 season with 762 home runs, exceeding the mark of that number that Aaron set from 1954-76. Bonds denied consciously consuming PEDs but has failed to gain entry to the sport's hall of honor.

Conte's Post-Prison Life

The former convict remarked to the press in a 2010 interview that “competitors do cheat to succeed, but the federal representatives cheat to win, too.” He doubted whether the outcomes in such proceedings merited the work.

After serving his sentence, he got back in business in 2007 by reviving a health products venture he had founded years before called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He operated in the same building that was home to his former lab in Burlingame.

Unapologetic Views

He continued to justify about his major involvement in providing custom PEDs to professional competitors. He claimed he simply helped “level the playing field” in a world already rife with rule-breakers.

Outside Views

To a WADA member, a former participant of the WADA, he may as well have been selling illegal narcotics. “It concerns totally illegal drug trafficking. You are talking about drug consumption in defiance of legal codes,” Wadler said in that period. “This is not philanthropy and it's not altruistic. It's trafficking.”