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The man behind the scheme, who devised a system to distribute hard-to-detect performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes such as baseball greats Giambi and Bonds and Olympic track champion Jones in the past, is deceased. His age was 75.

Federal Investigation and Criminal Cases

An official investigation into another company set up by him, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), led to the guilty verdicts of Marion Jones, competitive biker Tammy Thomas, and retired NFL player Dana Stubblefield, along with coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.

Open Discussions and Prison Time

Conte, who served four months in a penitentiary for steroid distribution, talked publicly about his well-known clients. He appeared on TV to assert he had seen decorated Olympian Marion Jones use a syringe with human growth hormones, but always refrained from implicating Bonds, the baseball star.

The Mitchell Report

This probe resulted in the publication Game of Shadows. A week after the publication date in that year, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig appointed former senate majority leader Mitchell to look into PED use.

He revealed he sold steroids called “the cream” and “the clear” and guided their usage to many top performers, such as Giambi, a five-time major league All-Star, the Mitchell report said.

Employing PEDs poses a serious threat to the integrity of the game,” the findings emphasized. “Prevalent consumption by players of these drugs puts at a disadvantage the those who refuse to cheat who decline to take them and leads to skepticism about the accuracy of historical stats.”

The report noted the problems were not sudden. He said everyone involved in the sport in the previous twenty years – encompassing commissioners, management, the players’ association and players – bore partial blame for what he labeled “the steroids era”.

Investigation Origins

The federal investigation into the company began with a revenue officer searching the corporate garbage. He ended up pleading guilty to a pair of the 42 charges filed against him in the mid-2000s ahead of a court case. Several of the defendants sentenced were convicted for lying to federal investigators.

Associated Convictions

His fitness instructor Greg Anderson, admitted guilt to illegal substance sales linked to his involvement with Balco. The court gave him to a quarter year in jail and an equal period of restricted movement.

Bonds' Legal Battles

The home run king was indicted for lying to a federal jury about obtaining performance-enhancing drugs and stood trial in 2011. Prosecutors dropped the case four years later when the government decided not to challenge an overturned obstruction of justice conviction to the federal apex court.

A multiple MVP winner and 14-time All-Star outfielder, Bonds retired after the 2007 campaign with 762 homers, exceeding the milestone of Aaron's total that Aaron achieved from 1954-76. The athlete refuted consciously consuming performance-enhancing drugs but has never been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

After Incarceration

He stated in an interview in a 2010 interview that “sportspeople break rules to triumph, but the officials and lawyers also bend the rules.” He doubted whether the conclusions in such proceedings merited the work.

After serving his sentence, he returned to work in that year by reviving a health products venture he had founded years before called SNAC System. He located it in the same building that was home to Balco in Burlingame.

Unapologetic Views

Conte remained defiant about his central role in providing custom PEDs to professional competitors. He maintained he simply helped “level the playing field” in a sports environment already rife with doping athletes.

Expert Opinions

To a WADA member, a then-member of the global anti-doping body, Conte was essentially distributing cocaine or heroin. “You are talking about blatant drug dealing. This refers to drug consumption in breach of national statutes,” the doctor remarked in 2007. “This isn't charity and this is not some do-gooding. This is drug dealing.”