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The man behind the scheme, who devised a plan to provide hard-to-detect performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes such as baseball icons Giambi and Bonds and track and field star Jones in the past, has died. His age was 75.

Government Probe and Criminal Cases

An official investigation into another company established by Conte, the Bay Area lab, resulted in the criminal findings of Jones, elite sprint cyclist Tammy Thomas, and retired NFL player Dana Stubblefield, along with trainers, suppliers, chemists, attorneys, and coaches.

Conte's Admissions and Sentencing

He, who served several months in federal prison for dealing steroids, talked publicly about his famous former clients. He was featured on broadcast media to claim he had observed triple Olympic champion Marion Jones inject herself with human growth hormones, but always refrained from pointing the finger at Barry Bonds, the baseball star.

Sport's Official Review

The investigation resulted in the publication Game of Shadows. Just days following the release of the book in that year, baseball Commissioner Selig brought on former senate majority leader George Mitchell to look into PED use.

Conte stated he distributed steroids referred to as two specific substances and coached on their use to many elite athletes, like Jason Giambi, a star player, according to the report.

“The illegal use of performance-enhancing substances represents a major risk to the honesty of the competition,” the Mitchell report concluded. “Broad usage by players of these drugs unfairly disadvantages the honest athletes who refuse to use them and raises questions about the accuracy of baseball records.”

The report noted the challenges were not sudden. He said each participant in baseball in the preceding decades – covering leaders, management, the representative body and athletes themselves – bore partial blame for what he called “the steroids era”.

How It Began

The official probe into the laboratory started when a tax agent digging through the business refuse. He ultimately admitted guilt to a pair of the multiple accusations against him in the mid-2000s ahead of a court case. Half a dozen of the individuals found guilty were caught lying to the court.

Related Cases

Bonds’ personal trainer Anderson, pleaded guilty to steroid distribution charges linked to his Balco connections. The court gave him to three months in jail and three months of home confinement.

The Slugger's Case

Bonds was accused of lying to a grand jury about receiving PEDs and faced a trial in that year. Prosecutors dropped the charges down the line when the government decided not to challenge an reversed conviction to the supreme court.

A decorated player and star performer, Bonds ended his career after the 2007 season with 762 home runs, exceeding the record of Aaron's total that Hank Aaron achieved from 1954-76. Bonds denied intentionally taking banned substances but has not been voted to the Hall of Fame.

Later Years

He remarked to the press in a 2010 interview that “competitors do cheat to win, but the government agents and prosecutors also bend the rules.” He wondered whether the results in such proceedings justified the effort.

Post-incarceration, Conte returned to work in 2007 by rebooting a supplements company he had launched previously called Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning or SNAC System. He set up shop in the very same place that was home to his former lab in Burlingame, California.

Continued Justification

Conte stayed unrepentant about his major involvement in providing custom PEDs to elite athletes. He argued he simply helped “level the playing field” in a world teeming with doping athletes.

Critical Perspectives

To an expert, a then-member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Conte could be compared to selling illegal narcotics. “This involves unlawful substance distribution. It's about substance use in breach of national statutes,” the doctor remarked in the past. “This is not philanthropy and it's not altruistic. It's illegal sales.”