00:00Victor Conte, who was the architect of a scheme to provide undetectable performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes, including baseball stars Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi, and Olympic track champion Marion Jones in the early 2000s has passed away Monday at the age of 75. His cause of death has not been released.
00:21Now if the name sounds familiar, he's the mastermind behind the steroid scandal that rocked professional baseball and Olympic sports. The federal government's investigation into a company he founded called the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative, or BALCO, led to the convictions of Jones, the elite sprint cyclist Tammy Thomas, and former NFL defensive lineman Dana Stubblefield, along with coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist,
00:51and a lawyer. Now Conte himself ended up pleading guilty to two of the 42 charges against him in 2005 before trial and served four months in a minimum security prison.
01:03That investigation then led to the book Game of Shadows, and a week after the book was published in 2006, then baseball commissioner Bud Selig hired former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to investigate steroids in the sport.
01:19Baseball legend Barry Bonds' personal trainer Greg Anderson pleaded guilty to steroid distribution charges stemming from his BALCO connections, and Bonds was charged with lying to a grand jury about receiving the performance-enhancing drugs, and he went on trial in 2011.
01:39However, prosecutors dropped the case four years later when the government decided not to appeal to the Supreme Court.
01:45Now Conte said he sold steroids known as the cream and the clear and advised dozens of elite athletes on how to use it, including Jason Giambi, but he never implicated Barry Bonds.
01:58This is a guy that's leaving a complicated legacy surrounding his involvement in professional sports and sports nutrition, but rest in peace, Victor Conte.
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