A federal judge sentenced BALCO founder Victor Conte and two other men Tuesday to terms ranging from four months in federal prison to probation for their roles in the scandal surrounding the laboratory that became both catalyst and symbol for the sporting world’s largest drug scandal.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston scolded the defendants for their criminal and moral culpability in providing illegal, banned substances to elite athletes.
These athletes “were cheating, and as you helped them do that, you were complicit in the cheating,” she told Conte. She said his sentence–four months in prison and four months of home detention–was far shorter than ones she had handed out “every day for people who are convicted of far less serious things than what you have done.”
Greg Anderson, 39, whose weightlifting expertise and, perhaps, his distribution of Conte’s designer steroids helped buddy Barry Bonds break the single-season home run record, got three months behind bars and three months of house arrest. He and Conte pleaded guilty to charges of steroid distribution and money laundering.
BALCO Vice President James Valente, 50, was sentenced to three years of probation on steroid-distribution charges.
“I’ll say that in my 20 years in law enforcement, I don’t think there has been a higher-impact case,” said U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan, the Bay Area’s top federal prosecutor. “It galvanized the debate about steroids.”
Sentencing of the fourth BALCO defendant, track coach Remi Korchemny, was delayed until early next year.
Reading from a statement, Conte conceded he was now the “poster child” for performance-enhancing drugs. This, he said, made him uniquely qualified to help rid the athletic world of them.
“Even the so-called gold-standard anti-doping programs designed for Olympic-caliber athletes are ineffective, let alone the more inept programs that exist in professional sports,” Conte said.
“It’s time for the world to finally become educated about the truth behind elite-level sports,so that we can begin to collectively work toward creating a genuine level playing field for the young athletes.”
Despite the fact that he has already been approached by anti-doping forces, Conte offered no specifics about how he planned to help them, either during his stay at a minimum-security detention camp or afterward. Conte and Anderson are to surrender Dec. 1.
So ended the core of the steroids case that began as a criminal probe of a nutrition company in 2002.
The effects of the case continue to reverberate from Congress, where legislators are debating a federal ban of steroids in all sports; to Rafael Palmeiro, the slugger whose positive steroid test contradicted his infamous finger-wagging denial; to the public debate over the accomplishments of Bonds, Marion Jones and others tainted by accusations of steroid use.
