guilty plea | Horse Racing Free Tips

On Wednesday, disgraced trainer Jorge Navarro pled guilty to one count of distribution of adulterated and misbranded drugs with the intent to defraud and mislead, a major development in the doping scandal that has rocked the sport since indictments were announced in March of 2020. Navarro will likely spend time in prison and has been ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $25,860,514. His career is over and he may be deported to his native Panama. But was this good day or bad day for the sport? And what needs to be done from here to clean up the game? Those were among the questions we posed to some prominent trainers who are known not just for their abilities but for their integrity. Here's what they had to say:

Mark Casse: It's a start and I hope there are others out there who can't sleep at night. I bet that Jason Servis is seeing this and is starting to change some of his ideas so far as how to go forward. Servis has been trying to get the wiretaps thrown out. He's got bigger problems right now than just the wiretaps. Navarro is a very bad guy and he is getting what he deserves. He's a big bully and he thought he could get away with anything. He made his bed. I hope he like sleeping in it.

Bill Mott: I'm not happy about it and I'm not pleased that this happened in the first place. I am sorry to see that some of these guys got themselves involved in this kind of stuff. The bottom line is to be good. I don't think you have to do what these guys were doing. I don't know where this all ends. I hope that some time the sport will become proactive enough to stay in front of this problem. This is a great sport. The fact that they are on to some of this stuff is a good thing. But they can also go overboard on therapeutic medications. The testing of the therapeutic medications has become much better and they are picking things up in picograms. I'm not comfortable or confident that the penalties are in line with the testing, for the therapeutic medications. People are worrying more about that than they should be. They should be worried a lot more about the performance-enhancing drugs like EPO that probably do make a difference and are given illegally. That's the challenge. USADA is coming in and I hope they will be more focused on finding the illegal, performance-enhancing drugs.

Shug McGaughey: I'm glad this happened because it has cleared the air. Hopefully, this will be another step toward getting this problem straightened out. The biggest creep I've ever been around or seen in my whole life is Jason Servis. I hope they start getting after him. He is a horrible, horrible guy and had has been horrible for the game. I didn't really know Navarro. I saw that video they took at Monmouth and that was terrible. But the good news is that we won't have to ever worry about him ever again.

Graham Motion: Every trainer should be appalled by what this guy was doing. I don't understand how you couldn't be. Basically, he was cheating all of us. I don't see this as a good day. I feel about as down about the sport as I ever have been. We need to clean it up more. Servis and Navarro aren't the only two guys. Where are we going? What else is coming? Is this it? These guys were beating some of us all the time and I find it hard to believe they were the only ones doing this. It's incredibly disappointing that these tracks aren't more proactive and doing something about this situation. With Navarro, it was also his behavior. He was so in your face with this. It's so upsetting to know what happened to XY Jet. We can all have horses get hurt but to actually treat a horse with something that probably ended up causing his demise is pretty shocking to me. This whole thing is pretty sad.

Ken McPeek: I am disappointed that this industry has to deal with something like this. This should get the attention of those who want to stain the game, so that makes this a good thing. Navarro claimed some horses off of me over the years, but he never really did anything significant with any of them. I had heard other trainers complain about him and what he was doing. Maybe their experience was different than mine. I don't know what tricks he was up to. I think we're headed in the right direction. The threshold levels are so low that we are practically racing drug free. Good horsemen can handle that and good horsemen have shown they can play by the rules and prosper.

Christophe Clement: What I want to know is will my owners ever get paid back for every time they were beaten by Jorge Navarro over the last four of five years? What have the racetracks done to protect my owners? It's not about me, it's about my owners. People are supposed to regulate the sport and protect them from this sort of thing happening. I'm not sure how many times Navarro beat me, but I finished behind Servis a number of times and in some big races. Unfortunately, this is nothing new. It's the culture out there. The vet is in charge. We need more horsemanship and less medication. There is a great difference between how people train around the world versus how they train in the U.S. Here, the vet is so much more powerful.

The post Trainers React to Navarro Guilty Plea appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Scott Robinson and Sarah Izhaki each pled guilty today to conspiring to unlawfully distribute adulterated and misbranded drugs for the purpose of doping racehorses. Robinson pled guilty before U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken, and will be sentenced by Judge Oetken Jan. 15, 2021. Izhaki pled guilty before U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, and will be sentenced by Judge Vyskocil Dec. 2, 2020. The guilty pleas are the first major domino to fall from the bombshell FBI indictments that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York dropped in March, which included charges against high-profile trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro.

“Scott Robinson and Sarah Izhaki represent the supply side of a market of greed that continues to endanger racehorses through the sale of performance-enhancing drugs,” said Audrey Strauss, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. “Each of these defendants provided the raw materials for fraud and animal abuse through the sale of unregulated and dangerous substances: Robinson’s products were manufactured in shoddy facilities with no professional oversight of their composition; Izhaki’s products were smuggled into the country and sold from cars in supermarket parking lots. These convictions show 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 Indictments, from at least in or about 2011 through at least in or about March, 2020, Robinson conspired with others to manufacture, sell, and ship millions of dollars’ worth of adulterated and misbranded equine drugs, including performance-enhancing drugs intended to be administered to racehorses for the purpose of improving those horses’ race performance in order to win races and obtain prize money. Robinson sold these drugs through several direct-to-consumer websites designed to appeal to racehorse trainers and owners, including, among others, “horseprerace.com.”

Robinson contributed to the conspiracy by, among other things, sourcing chemicals used to create custom PEDs that were advertised and sold; falsely labeling, packaging, and shipping those PEDs to customers across the country, including in the Southern District of New York; and collecting, reporting, and responding to employee and customer complaints regarding the misbranded and adulterated products advertised and sold online. 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 which 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. The drugs distributed through the defendants’ websites were manufactured in non-FDA registered facilities and carried significant risks to the animals affected through the administration of those illicit PEDs.

For example, in 2016, Robinson 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, Robinson wrote simply, “here is another one.”

In a separate conspiracy, from at least in or about February, 2018, through at least in or about November, 2019, Izhaki conspired with others to transport, sell, and deliver, tens of thousands of dollars of erythropoietin, a “blood builder” drug intended to increase a horse’s racing performance, which had been smuggled into the country from Mexico. This drug was covertly transported into the U.S. and sold by Izhaki, who believed it would be used by racehorse trainers to illicitly improve their horses’ race performance. Izhaki also offered for sale amphetamines, and a substance that Izhaki referred to as “the Devil,” which Izhaki claimed would mask the presence of potent drugs in a human or animal’s body.

The defendants are among 27 individuals charged 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 and horse racing officials, 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.

Robinson, 46, of Tampa, Fl., and Izhaki, 45, of Manalapan, N.J, each pled guilty to one count of conspiring to unlawfully introduce and receive with the intent to redistribute for pay or otherwise adulterated and misbranded drugs in interstate commerce, and to misbrand drugs in interstate commerce. This offense carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Any sentencing of the defendants will be determined by the judge.

Strauss praised the outstanding investigative work of the FBI New York Office’s Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force and its support of the Bureau’s Integrity in Sports and Gaming Initiative. 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 Food and Drug Administration and 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, Benet J. Kearney, and Andrew C. Adams are in charge of the prosecution.

The post Two Defendants in Federal Indictment Plead Guilty to Doping Charges appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post