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Servis Sentencing Delayed from May 18 to July 26

The sentencing for barred trainer Jason Servis, the final–and most notoriously prominent–defendant in the 2020 racehorse doping conspiracy scandal, was rescheduled by a judge's order on Thursday, from May 18 to July 26.

The May 4 court order got handed down four years to the date that the Servis-trained Maximum Security (New Year's Day) crossed the finish wire first in the GI Kentucky Derby. The colt was subsequently disqualified for in-race interference.

Unbeknownst to Servis at the time, federal investigators had already begun compiling a trove of wiretapped phone conversations between Servis and other now-convicted horsemen, veterinarians, and pharmaceutical suppliers, 31 of whom were arrested and charged in a series of coordinated law enforcement sweeps in March 2020.

Even after being implicated by other guilty-pleading conspirators, Servis had maintained his innocence and held out for a trial until Dec. 9, 2022.

As part of a negotiated plea deal with the government, he then pled guilty to a felony charge of misbranding and adulterating a chemical substance (described by prosecutors as similar to the bronchodilator clenbuterol but stronger), and to a misdemeanor, of misbranding and adulterating a purportedly performance-enhancing chemical called SGF-1000.

Prosecutors had alleged (and other convicted conspirators had admitted their roles in) Servis's administration of SGF-1000 to Maximum Security during the first half of 2019, when the colt rose from being a $16,000 maiden-claimer to a Grade I winner.

Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil of United States District Court (Southern District of New York) granted the sentencing date change at the request of Servis's attorney.

“I make this request for the following reasons,” attorney Rita Glavin wrote in a May 3 letter to the court. “First, the Apr. 27, 2023, Presentence Investigation Report contains numerous defense objections to certain factual assertions, as well as the Government's responses to the defense objections. Because of (i) the number of disagreements and (ii) the issues around those disagreements, the defense needs additional time to review documents and respond.

“Further, given the extent of the disagreements, the parties have scheduled time to meet and engage in a good faith effort to resolve as many disagreements as possible, such that if there remain disagreements, they can be streamlined and narrowed for the Court.

“Finally, I am lead counsel on another matter proceeding to trial in June 2023, which is why we seek a date later in July,” Glavin wrote.

The presentence investigation report is generally a public document that is available for anyone to access on the court's electronic docket. But the disputed one Servis's attorney referenced was not listed there as of deadline for this story.

Servis, 66, faces four years in prison when he is sentenced.

Prior to his plea deal, Servis had been scheduled to go on trial on two felony counts: Conspiracy to misbrand and adulterate performance-enhancing drugs, and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. He would have faced 25 years in prison on those two counts if convicted.

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Convicted Veterinarian Seth Fishman Was Hospitalized For Psychiatric Reasons During Trial

Dr. Seth Fishman was not present in a Manhattan court in the final days of his trial involving his role in manufacturing and distributing performance-enhancing drugs, an absence that had gone unexplained for months. But a motion issued Friday by his attorney Maurice H. Sercarz seeking an adjournment of his sentencing answered the question. On February 2, 2022, when the jury returned its verdict convicting Fishman, he was an inpatient in the psychiatric wing at Mt. Sinai Hospital West.

Fishman is scheduled to be sentenced Monday. Fishman was originally scheduled to be sentenced on May 5, but Sercarz has twice gotten the court to agree to a delay. His latest request for a delay is the first in which he raises the issue of Fishman's mental problems and delays in completing a report covering his medical and emotional issues.

Sercarz's filing painted a picture of a client who has battled mental health issues on an off for years and was first placed in a psychiatric unit at a New York hospital in 1996.

According to Sercarz's motion, on Feb. 18, Fishman was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals and taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) where he was placed in isolation for over a week and continued to be evaluated by mental health professionals. Additional time was needed for doctors at MDC to come up with a cocktail of medications that could help alleviate his condition.

Fishman remained locked up at MDC into the spring when Fishman and his family agreed to put the veterinarian through tests that would yield a psychological evaluation. On or about April 22, a doctor identified as Dr. Bardley was hired to conduct the evaluation. The process was delayed because Fishman was unable to sign some paperwork due to sporadic lockdowns at MDC.

Bardley conducted his first interview with Fishman on May 27. A follow-up appointment scheduled for June had to be canceled due to another lockdown at MDC. After still more problems, Bardley was able to conduct an evaluation with Fishman, who remains at MDC, on Thursday and submitted a draft of his report to Sercarz. Sercarz wrote that sentencing should be delayed until after Bardley and his staff have had a chance to complete and refine their report.

Sercarz is hoping that submission of Bardley's findings may lead to leniency when it comes to sentencing.

“While the defendant will seek a measure of leniency based upon matters relating to his mental health, we submit that the public will obtain a satisfactory understanding of the nature of the defendant's condition and the way in which it may influence the Court's judgment if limitations are imposed upon descriptions of the defendant's conditions,” the motion reads.

The jury found Fishman, 50, guilty of two counts of conspiring to violate adulteration and misbranding laws and the manufacture of PEDS administered to racehorses. He faces up to 20 years in a federal prison.

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Zulueta Joins Growing List of Plea-Changers in Doping Case

Marcos Zulueta, the now-barred Thoroughbred trainer facing two felony charges in the alleged nationwide horse-doping conspiracy case, appears on the verge of joining the growing list of defendants flipping their initial “not guilty” pleas to “guilty.”

On Thursday, Zulueta, formerly based in the mid-Atlantic region, was granted an Oct. 15 change-of-plea hearing in United States District Court (Southern District of New York).

If Zulueta does indeed end up pleading guilty, his flip will be the eighth in the wide-ranging case that initially included 28 defendants listed in the original indictment from March 2020.

Although not considered a “headline” trainer like fellow defendants Jorge Navarro (who has admitted to doping horses and faces five years in prison when he is sentenced in December) or Jason Servis (who maintains he is not guilty and has a trial date approaching in 2022), Zulueta's name surfaced frequently in wire-tapped conversations secretly recorded by federal investigators before they charged him with one count of drug adulteration and another for conspiracy to defraud using misbranded drugs.

According to a trove of phone conversation transcripts released as evidence by the government in September court documents, on Apr. 3, 2019, Zulueta and Navarro allegedly discussed the testability of a drug administered to the elite-level sprinter X Y Jet (Kantharos), who was trained (and admittedly doped) by Navarro.

X Y Jet died suddenly eight months after that call while still under Navarro's care. The circumstances of the horse's death have never been fully explained.

In another conversation between Navarro and Zulueta from around the same time frame, Navarro and Zulueta allegedly discussed a performance-enhancing “drench” that Navarro described as “a milkshake that…won't show up” that is to be administered “the day of the race.”

At one point, Navarro allegedly boasted, “Marcos I drenched two today and [the creator of the substance] says you can take their blood and nothing will come out,” unlike other drenches where “they catch you.”

During another wire-tapped call, Zulueta allegedly cautions Navarro about the dangers of winning too often with doped horses.

“Yeah, you should be happy-happy-happy that you are not winning all of them,” Zulueta allegedly said, according to the transcript. “Otherwise, you will be arrested.”

Zulueta's words ended up being prophetic: On March 9, 2020, both trainers, plus 26 others, were taken into federal custody in a coordinated series of arrests.

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Owner Of Illegal Racehorse Doping Websites Scott Mangini Pleads Guilty In Federal Court

Audrey Strauss, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Scott Mangini pled guilty today to conspiring to unlawfully distribute adulterated and misbranded drugs with the intent to defraud and mislead, in connection with the charges filed in United States v. Robinson et al., 20 Cr. 162 (JPO). Mangini pled guilty before U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken, and will be sentenced on September 10, 2021, before Judge Oetken.

U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: “Scott Mangini created and flooded the supply side of a market of greed that continues to endanger racehorses through the sale of performance-enhancing drugs. Mangini designed and created dozens of products intended for use by those engaged in fraud and animal abuse. His products were manufactured with no oversight of their composition, in shoddy facilities, despite prior efforts by state and federal regulators to shut down Mangini's operation and strip his license. Mangini's guilty plea underscores that our Office and our partners at the FBI are committed to the prosecution and investigation of corruption, fraud, and endangerment in the horse racing industry.”

According to the prior Indictments, the Superseding Information to which Mangini pled guilty, and other court documents, as well as statements made in public court proceedings:

From at least in or about 2011 through at least in or about March 2020, Mangini and his conspirators manufactured, sold, and shipped millions of dollars' worth of adulterated and misbranded equine drugs, including performance-enhancing drugs (“PEDs”) intended to be administered to racehorses for the purpose of improving those horses' race performance in order to win races and obtain prize money. Mangini, a former pharmacist whose license was suspended in 2016, sold these drugs through several direct-to-consumer websites designed to appeal to racehorse trainers and owners, including, among others, “horseprerace.com” and “racehorsemeds.com.”

Mangini contributed to the conspiracy by, among other things, using his training to design and create custom PEDs that were advertised and sold online, using misleading labels, packaging, and return address information, including sales to customers in the Southern District of New York. Among the drugs advertised and sold during the course of the conspiracy were “blood builders,” which are used by racehorse trainers and others to increase red blood cell counts and/or the oxygenation of muscle tissue of a racehorse in order to stimulate the horse's endurance, which enhances that horse's performance in, and recovery from, a race, as well as customized analgesics that are used by racehorse trainers and others to deaden a horse's nerves and block pain in order to improve a horse's race performance. Mangini and his co-conspirators repeatedly touted illegal drugs sold on these websites as substances that “WILL NOT TEST” in the event of drug screens by racing officials. For example, Mangini's pain-numbing product “Numb It Injection” was advertised as a “proprietary formula and without question the most powerful pain shot in the market today AND WILL NOT TEST,” and customers were expressly directed to administer the drug by “injection as close to the event or extreme exercise as possible.”

The drugs distributed through the defendant's websites were manufactured in non-Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) -registered facilities and carried significant risks to the animals affected through the administration of those illicit PEDs. For example, in 2016, Mangini and his co-conspirator, Scott Robinson, who was previously convicted and sentenced in this case, received a complaint regarding the effect of his unregulated drugs on a customer's horse: “starting bout 8 hours after I give the injection and for about 36 hours afterwards both my horses act like they are heavily sedated, can barely walk. Could I have a bad bottle of medicine, I'm afraid to give it anymore since this has happened three times.”

Commenting on this complaint to Mangini, Robinson wrote simply, “here is another one.”

Mangini is among 29 individuals charged to date in a series of Indictments arising from an investigation of a widespread scheme by racehorse trainers, veterinarians, PED distributors, and others to manufacture, distribute, and receive adulterated and misbranded PEDs and to secretly administer those PEDs to racehorses competing at all levels of professional horseracing. By evading PED prohibitions and deceiving regulators, horse racing officials, and the FDA, among others, participants in these schemes sought to improve race performance and obtain prize money from racetracks, all to the detriment and risk of the health and well-being of the racehorses.

Mangini, 55, of Boca Raton, Florida, pled guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the federal drug misbranding and adulteration laws. This offense carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The maximum potential sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the judge.

Ms. Strauss praised the outstanding investigative work of the New York FBI Office's Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force and its support of the FBI's Integrity in Sports and Gaming Initiative. Ms. Strauss also thanked the New Jersey Attorney General's Office, the New York State Police, and the New York City Police Department for their support of this investigation, and the FDA and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for their assistance and expertise.

This case is being handled by the Office's Money Laundering and Transnational Criminal Enterprises Unit. Assistant United States Attorneys Sarah Mortazavi, Anden Chow, Benet Kearney, and Andrew C. Adams are in charge of the prosecution.

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