'Should I send the feds a thank-you card?' Victor Conte revisits BALCO scandal
Victor Conte's Bentley makes a powerful cameo in the Netflix documentary "Untold: Hall of Shame" almost 20 years after federal agents raided Conte's infamous BALCO Laboratories.
The film, set to be released Tuesday, shows Conte wiping down his luxury car – a 2023 Bentayga S that cost $275,000, he told USA TODAY Sports.
Conte, 73, spent four months in prison for his part in the steroids scandal that left baseball slugger Barry Bonds standing accused of using performance-enhancing drugs and implicated Olympic track and field star Marion Jones and many other professional athletes. While Bonds, Jones and others never recovered from the negative publicity, Conte suggests he benefited from it.
He claims he has made $80 million from sales of ZMA and other supplements from his Bay area-company, Sports Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning (SNAC), which he founded in 1987.
“Should I send the feds a thank-you card?" he asks with a grin in the film, which runs 1 hour, 18 minutes. “They might have made me millions of dollars."
FOLLOW THE MONEY: MLB player salaries and payrolls for every major league team
Largely through Conte, the movie offers a compelling look at the steroids scandal that rocked sports in 2003. One of the film's co-stars is Jeff Novitzky, the IRS agent who led the investigation into BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative). He claims Conte, the mastermind of the steroids distribution ring, made hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, from having athletes such as Bonds endorse Conte’s products in exchange for performance-enhancing drugs.
Bonds, 59, has denied using performance-enhancing drugs and, according to text shown in "Hall of Shame," he did not respond to interview requests. He remains Major League Baseball's all-time leader in home runs with 762 but has been shut out of the Hall of Fame by the voters.
Jones, 47, suffered her own fall from grace.
In 2008, she was sentenced to six months in prison for perjury after lying about her steroid use. Jones was forced to return all five of her Olympic medals from the 2000 Games, denies using performance-enhancing drugs and, according to text shown in "Hall of Shame,'' did not respond to interview requests.
Conte denies he gave Bonds steroids, contending he supplied the retired San Francisco Giants star with only legal supplements. But he does not deny profiting off Bonds, who in 2003 was pictured in Muscle & Fitness magazine wearing clothes bearing the ZMA logo.
"Branding is how I win," Conte said.
Does Victor Conte have regrets?
In the film, Conte’s voice begins to tremble when he recalls the first day of his prison sentence.
“When they brought the mail that day, they put the mail through the food slot in the door," he said.
There were photos of his three daughters, according to Conte, who says mailed them to arrive at the minimum-security prison in Taft, California, the same day he did.
“That’s kind of when it all hit me," he says, growing tearful. “And I realized that I’d completely lost control of my life. I hadn’t really reflected on how serious the consequences were. But I thought that I’m a big boy, I’m a man, whatever happens I’ll be able to deal with it.
“And I was a horrible father. I took their sense of security away from them and created a lot of uncertainty."
He continues to cry while saying he recognized the athletes and their families were being affected the same way. The remorse seems genuine. But so does something else Conte says earlier in the film, reflecting on helping athletes achieve greatness through performance-enhancing drugs.
“When Marion Jones hit the finish line and won the gold medal, when Barry Bonds hit all these home runs," Conte says, “you know, any of these great accomplishments, those are things that I’ll always be proud of."
Victor Conte, Jeff Novitzky tangle on social media
Novitzky, who in 2015 left the IRS to oversee the UFC’s drug-testing program along with athlete health and performance, derides Conte as a “used-car, snake-oil salesman guy, bull (expletive) artist."
Conte has used X, formerly Twitter, to air his equally unflattering feelings about Novitzky.
On July 23, Conte wrote, “Jeff Novitzky is a lair (sic). @jeffnovitkzyufc told other agents he planned 2 cash in on the BACO (sic) case w/book & movie deals. Cash $ found by IRS agents went “missing" causing an internal investigation. $ not found."
A federal investigation did not determine what happened to $600 that went missing after $63,920 in cash was seized from a safe in the home of Greg Anderson, then Bonds' trainer, according to a 2009 report from the Associated Press. Documents show an internal IRS investigation "did not identify who was responsible for taking the missing $600," according to the Associated Press report.
Conte has cited the issue as one reason 40 of the 42 criminal charges originally brought against him were dropped.
Replying to Conte’s post, Novitzky wrote, “C’mon Vic! Didn’t you thank me a few years back for saving you from a life of crime and doping athletes? Or u still dabbling like I’m hearing? Just be careful about what you throw away!"
The last sentence was a clear reference to the evidence Novitzky collected from the trash outside BALCO.
Conte responded to Novitzky, writing, “Yes Jeff I did thank you publicly a few years back. I did my time and I’ve been an outspoken anti-doping advocate ever since. No dabbling. I’m a truth speaker now."
What is Victor Conte doing now?
Conte has re-emerged into the public eye thanks to what he calls “the red-light district of sport."
That would be boxing.
Proudly, he reports he has worked with 20 current or former world champions and that all of them have been subject to regular drug testing by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association. According to Conte, none have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
The fighters in Conte’s stable include Clarissa Shields, the undisputed women's middleweight world champion; Terence Crawford, the undisputed welterweight world champion; and Devin Haney, the undisputed lightweight world champion.
In the film, Haney is shown training and using an oxygen mask at Conte’s facility in the Bay Area. Conte touts the benefits of high-gravity training and also says he provides the boxers with blood work analysis, dietary recommendations and nutritional supplements like the ones he still sells.
“There are lots of things that work that are legal," he says.
At the same time, Conte says, he knows he’ll always have skeptics -- such as a former IRS agent.
“He’ll take any publicity as long as his name is in the lights," Novitzky says in the film. “So I don’t think you can believe a word the guy says."
But believe what you see: Conte, who at one point faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison before pleading guilty to one count of distributing steroids and one count of money laundering, is fussing over his Bentley.