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Victor Conte, who masterminded a operation to provide stealthy performance-enhancing drugs to top competitors featuring baseball greats Giambi and Bonds and sprinting gold medalist Marion Jones decades ago, has died. His age was 75.

Federal Investigation and Convictions

An official probe of another company established by Conte, the Bay Area lab, culminated in the convictions of Jones, competitive biker Tammy Thomas, and former NFL defensive lineman Dana Stubblefield, as well as coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Public Statements and Sentencing

Conte, who completed several months in a federal facility for dealing steroids, spoke openly about his famous former clients. He was featured on television to claim he had witnessed three-time Olympic medalist Jones self-administer with growth hormones, but always refrained from incriminating Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger.

The Mitchell Report

The investigation resulted in the volume titled Game of Shadows. A week after the release of the book in 2006, MLB commissioner Bud Selig hired political figure George Mitchell to look into PED use.

He revealed he sold steroids referred to as “the cream” and “the clear” and guided their use to many professional sportspeople, including Giambi, a five-time major league All-Star, according to the report.

Using performance-enhancing substances represents a major risk to the fairness of the sport,” the findings emphasized. “Broad usage by players of such substances puts at a disadvantage the clean players who avoid them and creates doubts about the legitimacy of sporting achievements.”

Mitchell indicated the issues were not sudden. He said all parties in the sport in the previous twenty years – including commissioners, management, the representative body and athletes themselves – bore partial blame for what he labeled the PED epoch.

Case Inception

The government's case into Balco began with a IRS investigator examining the company’s trash. The defendant ended up pleading guilty to a couple of the numerous counts he faced in 2005 prior to court proceedings. Six of the individuals found guilty were convicted for misleading grand jurors.

Associated Convictions

Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson, pleaded guilty to illegal substance sales arising from his involvement with Balco. The court gave him to three months in incarceration and an equal period of house arrest.

Bonds' Legal Battles

Bonds was charged with deceiving a grand jury about receiving banned substances and went on trial in 2011. Prosecutors dropped his case down the line when the government decided not to challenge an overturned ruling to the federal apex court.

A decorated player and star performer, he concluded his playing days after the that season with 762 homers, surpassing the record of Aaron's total that Aaron established from 1954-76. The athlete refuted intentionally taking performance-enhancing drugs but has never been elected to the sport's hall of honor.

Later Years

The former convict remarked to the press in a 2010 discussion that “sportspeople break rules to succeed, but the officials and lawyers engage in misconduct as well.” He doubted whether the outcomes in such legal cases were worth the resources.

Following his prison term, Conte resumed operations in the late 2000s by reviving a health products venture he had founded two decades earlier called SNAC System. He located it in the same building that was home to the original company in Burlingame, California.

Defiant Stance

He remained defiant about his key part in distributing designer steroids to professional competitors. He claimed he simply helped “balance the odds” in a sports environment full of cheaters.

Outside Views

To an expert, a then-member of the global anti-doping body, he may as well have been selling illegal narcotics. “It concerns blatant drug dealing. You are talking about using drugs in breach of national statutes,” Wadler said in that period. “This is not philanthropy and it's not altruistic. It's illegal sales.”