Jordan Fishman Scheduled For Change Of Plea Hearing On Oct. 6

Jordan Fishman, a defendant in the federal horse doping case who was indicted on charges related to drug adulteration and misbranding last March, will enter a change of plea before Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, on Oct. 6, according to the Thoroughbred Daily News.

“From at least in or about 2002 through at least in or about March 2020, Seth Fishman, Lisa Giannelli, Jordan Fishman, and Rick Dane, Jr., the defendants, and others known and unknown, engaged in a corrupt scheme to create, manufacture, and distribute adulterated and misbranded PEDs to racehorse trainers and others in a systematic effort to improve race performance of racehorses, and obtain prize money as a result,” reads the indictment. “The defendants, created, marketed, and distributed a variety of PEDs, which were manufactured in an unregistered facility, mislabeled, and/or administered with no valid prescription.”

Several other defendants in the case have entered changes of plea from “not guilty” to “guilty” in recent months, including Jorge Navarro, Kristian Rhein, and Michael Kegley, Jr.

Read more at the Thoroughbred Daily News.

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Week in Review: Debate Over ‘PED’ Devolves Into Theater of the Absurd

When former pharmacist Scott Mangini was sentenced to 18 months in prison last Friday for his admitted role in the federal doping case, it provided another piece to the puzzle in terms of how other offenders might later get sentenced for their roles in the same alleged conspiracy.

Specifically, almost everyone in the Thoroughbred industry wants to know what will happen to the highest-profile defendants at the very end of the supply chain: The barred trainer Jorge Navarro, who has already pled guilty to one felony count in the conspiracy and faces a maximum prison term of five years; plus the similarly ruled-off trainer Jason Servis, who is still fighting his charges even though the feds allegedly have him recorded on wiretapped phone conversations repeatedly discussing his administration of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to horses.

Theoretically, the end-user defendants who put needles into horseflesh should be the ones who get penalized the harshest.

Here's the sentencing hierarchy so far: Mangini's 1 1/2 years behind bars matched the sentence handed down in March by the same judge to Scott Robinson, who pled guilty to charges related to marketing and selling the illicit pharmaceuticals that Mangini (and others) created.

Sarah Izhaki, considered a bit player for selling misbranded versions of Epogen on a much smaller scale, has already been sentenced to the time she had served plus three years of supervised release. But Izhaki had extenuating health circumstances that affected her relatively lenient penalty, which was described by the judge as a “one-off” sentence that other defendants should not expect to receive.

The sentencing stakes could be raised a little bit higher for the next two defendants on the court calendar. One is Michael Kegley Jr., an independent contractor for the Kentucky-based company MediVet Equine, who pled guilty to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding. Kristian Rhein, a suspended veterinarian formerly based at Belmont Park, pled guilty to a similar felony charge “for use in the covert doping of Thoroughbreds.”

But beyond the issue of jail time, the back-and-forth sparring between federal prosecutors and the defense at Mangini's

Sept. 10 sentencing hearing revealed another bizarre aspect of the alleged conspiracy: Even after pleading guilty back in April, Mangini still claimed–right up until the moments before his sentencing–that he had neither created nor sold PEDs.

United States District Judge J. Paul Oetken at one point termed those contentions “semantic issues” that were not really material to Mangini's sentencing. But as federal prosecutors put it when filing pre-sentencing documents that addressed this issue, Mangini's “continued refusal to contend with the basic facts of his offense speaks poorly of this defendant's character and to the continued danger posed by a man who refuses to acknowledge the core of his wrongdoing.”

Mangini's reasoning went something like this: Yes, he committed a felony by conspiring to distribute adulterated and misbranded drugs. But allegedly, the overwhelming portion of the online businesses that he was involved in simply sold knock-off versions of therapeutic products that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Mangini had argued that many of the buyers of the drugs he created were pet owners and veterinary clinics that just wanted cheaper versions of regulated pharmaceuticals, like omeprazole paste to reduce gastric acid, which he claimed was the primary focus of his e-commerce websites.

Mangini's attorney, Bill Harrington, argued on Friday that out of the 27,600+ product sales that the prosecution had presented as evidence, only a “tiny sliver” under 1% could possibly be considered PEDs, and even then only under very narrow circumstances.

Harrington said it was important for the court documentation in his client's case to reflect that Mangini did not “flood the supply side of the market” with PEDs as prosecutors have written in some press releases, because such allegedly false assertions will harm Mangini's reputation forever and “make the case sound more grave than it is.”

Harrington told the judge that “the U.S. Attorney's office is trying to say this is a crime where Mr. Mangini was corrupting the horse racing industry. And they don't have the evidence of that. The drugs don't support that.”

United States Attorney Andrew Adams begged to differ, and he confidently swatted aside any attempts to characterize Mangini's conduct as not involving the doping of racehorses.

“Mr. Mangini's position that none of these drugs were designed, marketed, intended to be PEDs is just ludicrous,” Adams said in court. “It's belied by the marketing materials. It's belied by the materials that were components of the drugs themselves. And it's belied by the methods by which these drugs were being sold, and the people to whom they were being marketed.”

The feds came armed with plenty of evidence. First, consider the names of the two chief websites Mangini was involved with: One was called racehorsemeds.com. The other was named horseprerace.com.

Next check out the names of some of the products peddled openly on those sites: Blood Building Explosion. Pre-Race Explosion. Growth Factor 5000. Horse Power! Equine Growth Hormone. Numb It Purple Pain Injection. Plug It Bleeder Injection. Blast Off Breather Injection.

One product called White Lightning was described as something that would “increase stamina and performance in racehorses, greyhounds, and camels.”

Another named Ice Explosion–described on the website as “one of our top selling products”–was advertised as a substance that “works to improve both sprint and endurance performance and reduce the perception of pain.”

Many of these products were stamped “WILL NOT TEST.” And some were instructed to be administered “4-6 hours prior to event,” according to the inventory list provided by the feds.

“The point of this operation was to assist people in getting an illegal edge in horse racing,” Adams said. “To find otherwise would ask the court to ignore essentially everything that was ever written, both in the [product] formulas and in the marketing materials for both websites that Mr. Mangini was a part of.”

The prosecutor continued: “The recommended dosages on [the websites], they're all aimed at horses. If you were to take what is on the website as the recommended dosage and applied it to a dog, you'd be seriously endangering the dog. The idea that this is therapeutic, [that] it could be for your house pet, is again, completely absurd. These were aimed at horses, aimed at racing horses, and aimed to do exactly what the marketing materials said they were aimed to do: To make your racehorse run faster.”

Mangini's contention, according to one pre-sentencing court filing, was that such products were allegedly “dietary supplements that contain different combinations of vitamins, amino acids, electrolytes, and minerals. Some dietary supplements say they 'will not test' because their ingredients are not prohibited by varied racing rules.”

With specific reference to the blood builders, Harrington held his ground in Mangini's defense.

“We dispute that any of those are PEDs,” Harrington said. “The only basis for saying that they're PEDs is the way they were advertised.”

So essentially, Mangini's attorney was saying that the websites were only engaging in hyperbole that is reflective of a society in which consumers aren't supposed to take claims of alleged performance enhancement at face value. Harrington made the analogy that human athletes who go to the mall to purchase gaudily advertised dietary supplements at a store like GNC know there's really nothing illicit in them.

“My argument is that even those non-injectable dietary supplements sold to people by GNC are advertised the same way,” Harrington said. “We all agree those are not PEDs. Yet they use the same language–'explode,' 'enhancement.'”

Adams didn't buy that line of reasoning.

“There's no dietary supplement that comes with a syringe,” Adams said, noting that many of Mangini's products did.

“The court should not accept the facile argument that dietary supplements at GNC…or a box of Wheaties, none of which are sold with a syringe included, is the same thing as what Mr. Mangini was doing,” Adams said.

Yet in the end, Oetken did end up making a concession to Mangini's semantics argument.

The judge ordered that Mangini's sentencing documentation be amended to strike references to PEDs, instead replacing that descriptor with the phrase, “animal drugs, including drugs that may enhance animals' performance or horses' performance.”

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Drug Distributor Kegley Pleads Guilty, Faces up to 36 Months in Jail

Among the individuals originally indicted in the doping scandal involving top trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro, Michael Kegley Jr. entered a guilty plea Friday morning during a teleconference before federal judge Mary Kay Vysockil. Kegley pled guilty to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding.

Kegley had originally pled not guilty to the charges.

Kegley will not be sentenced until a Nov. 22 hearing, but it was revealed during Friday's proceedings that he has entered into a plea agreement with government lawyers in which he has agreed to a sentence ranging from 30 to 36 months. Vysockil noted that there is no parole involved when someone is sentenced on federal charges and that most guilty parties serve at least 85% of their sentence.

Kegley, a 41-year-old Lexington, KY resident, was the director of sales for a company based in Nicholasville, KY called MediVet Equine Associates LLC, and admitted in court that the firm produced and sold drugs that were not permissible to be used on  racehorses. The primary drug sold by Kegley was SGF-1000. In phone calls intercepted by the FBI, Servis admits to using SGF-1000 and, at one point, says, “I've been using it on everything almost.”

Vysockil, a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, confronted Kegley, saying, “At this time I would like you to tell me what you did that makes you guilty of the offense charged…Specifically, what you did, when you did it, with whom you did it, where you did it.”

Kegley responded: “Beginning in 2016, I was an independent contractor for a company, MediVet Equine. We sold a variety of products, including SGF-1000. I sold these products to veterinarians, horse trainers. When I did that I knew there was no medical prescription for those products. Also at the time, I knew that the product was not manufactured in an FDA approved facility, nor was it approved for sale by the FDA.”

Vysockil continued to press Kegley, asking a series of follow-up questions. She asked Kegley if he knew that the trainers buying the products intended to use them on Thoroughbred racehorses and whether or not he knew the products were to be used in such a way that regulators could not detect the products through drug tests. Kegley answered “yes” to both questions.

Shortly after Friday's hearing, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss issued a statement, which read: “Michael Kegley promoted and sold unregulated performance enhancing substances intended for use by those engaged in fraud and unconscionable animal abuse in the world of professional horseracing. This conviction underscores that our Office and our partners at the FBI are committed to the prosecution and investigation of corruption, fraud, and endangerment at every level of the horse racing industry.”

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Mangini Pleads Guilty in Doping Case

Scott Mangini, who, along with Jason Servis,  Jorge Navarro and others was indicted in March 2020 for his involvement in a horse doping scheme, has pled guilty to conspiring to unlawfully distribute adulterated and misbranded drugs with the intent to defraud and mislead, it was announced Friday by Audrey Strauss, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He faces a maximum sentence of five years.

Mangini, 55, became the third person involved with the case to enter a guilty plea. The list includes Mangini's business partner, Scott Robinson. It is unknown whether or not Mangini and Robinson are cooperating with authorities and providing them with lists of additional clients who were not named in the original indictments.

Mangini will be sentenced Sept. 10 by Judge Paul Oetken. Robinson was sentenced to 18 months for his role in the scheme to use performance-enhancing drugs on horses. He also had to forfeit $3.8 million.

Mangini used several websites, among them “horseprerace.com” and “racehorsemeds.com,” to sell drugs, including illegal medications he called “Blast Off Red Blood Builder,” “Extreme Explosion,” “Oral Epo,” and “Green Speed.”

“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,” Strauss said in a statement. “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.”

The government contends that from as early as 2011 through the March 2020 indictments, Mangini manufactured, sold and shipped millions of dollars worth of adulterated and misbranded equine performance-enhancing drugs. Mangini is a former pharmacist whose license was suspended in 2016.

Many of the drugs sold by Mangini fell under the category of “blood builders,” which were used by trainers to increase red blood cell counts and improve a horse's endurance. Other drugs were used to deaden a horse's nerves and block pain in order to improve a horse's race performance. In addition, Mangini told his clients that no tests were available for the drugs he was selling. 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 as something that could not be found through post or pre-race tests.

According to the U.S. Attorney's office, Mangini was selling drugs that were manufactured in non-Food and Drug Administration registered facilities and they carried significant risks to the animals affected through the administration of those drugs.

Mangini operated out of Boca Raton, Florida.

Sarah Izhaki, also a drug distributer, has also pled guilty but has yet to be sentenced.

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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