Jorge Navarro, Dr. Seth Fishman, Jordan Fishman, Lisa Gianelli, Dr. Erica Garcia, Rick Dane Jr., Christopher Oakes, and Michael Tannuzzo have all entered documents in U.S. District Court asking a judge to dismiss charges against them related to drug adulteration and misbranding conspiracy.
Defendants Seth Fishman and Gianelli filed a motion to dismiss various counts of the superseding indictment last week, which was followed by letters of intent from attorneys for Navarro, Garcia, Jordan Fishman and Dane stating their intent to join in. The motion from Fishman and Giannelli's attorneys site a few different bases for the motion, particularly that the counts as written don't allege illegal actions under the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, which is the basis for the criminal charges.
According to texts and phone calls intercepted by the FBI, Navarro requested misbranded or adulterated drugs from Fishman for administration to horses in his care, including X Y Jet, who died suddenly of an apparent heart attack in January 2020.
Their motion also casts doubt on who was supposedly deceived by their alleged activities involving misbranded drugs. The indictment stated that the drugs were designed to evade detection by state racing officials or tracks, but the defendants claim that misleading state officials and racetracks isn't a federal crime under the Act.
Oakes' motion includes similar language, while Tannuzzo's states that the first count of the superseding indictment “fail[s] to state an offense as applied to him.”
The government has not yet responded to those motions and letters of intent, filed Feb. 5.
The federal case includes five total counts — four charges of drug adulteration and misbranding conspiracy and one count of mail and wire fraud — with different groups of defendants attached to each, dependent upon their alleged actions and relationship with each other. Charges were originally filed in March 2020 accusing more than two dozen people in the Thoroughbred and Standardbred industries of doping racehorses with adulterated or misbranded drugs or supplying such materials to horsemen. A superseding indictment was filed in November 2020 and left off a number of the original defendants from the March indictment, including Gregory Skelton, Ross Cohen, Nick Surick, Chris Marino and Henry Argueta, though it's unclear whether that means those defendants have taken deals with prosecutors. Their case files remain open with no plea change as of this writing.
According to a status conference last summer, discovery in this case is not expected to be completed before late fall, as attorneys for the Southern District of New York have provided voluminous evidence collected by a lengthy FBI investigation to defense counsel. That status conference set dates by which various motions and subsequent responses would be due by both sides in the case, and those deadlines stretch on through the spring.
The post Navarro Among Handful Of Federal Defendants Filing Motions To Dismiss Drug Charges appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
