Jorge Navarro | Horse Racing Free Tips

Ned Toffey Talks Into Mischief, Authentic, Monomoy Girl and More On Writers’ Room

Business is booming at Spendthrift Farm. The once-defunct stallion station has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence in the past decade, thanks in large part to a superstar stallion, a deep-pocketed owner and the steady hand of an experienced general manager. Ned Toffey has seen it all since B. Wayne Hughes purchased Spendthrift in 2004, and he joined the TDN Writers’ Room presented by Keeneland Wednesday. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Toffey talked about the explosive growth of the farm, what makes Into Mischief special, likely Horse of the Year Authentic (Into Mischief), the future of recent Spendthrift purchases Monomoy Girl (Tapizar) and Got Stormy (Get Stormy) and much more.

“Once we did some renovations here at Spendthrift, we brought Malibu Moon over and really thought that was going to be our flagship horse. And all the while there was this little son of Harlan’s Holiday we bought for $180,000,” Toffey recalled when asked about Into Mischief. “The first couple of years he was here, he was a very tough sell. One of the programs that we did, ‘Share the Upside’, was actually designed to help sell seasons to Into Mischief. But it turned out to be the opposite. Into Mischief made the program. He gave us credibility and has given us the confidence to start to go after other top horses. He’s done so much. He drives traffic to the farm. We’ll be fortunate if we can ever have another one as good as him. People give us a lot of credit for having ‘made’ Into Mischief. We’re happy to take that credit, but I think the credit goes to Into Mischief.”

Spendthrift made major waves at last week’s Fasig-Tipton November ‘Night of the Stars’, shelling out $9.5 million for champion topper Monomoy Girl, $4.2 million for MGISW Bast (Uncle Mo) and $2.75 million for MGISW Got Stormy.

“We wanted to have some marquee mares to breed Into Mischief, Authentic and even some of the stallions that came in within the last year as well,” Toffey explained. “We generally will move our own mares out of the way if we have clients that really need to get their mares bred. So oftentimes some of the mares that we start out planning to breed to some of these stallions, end up getting bred to somebody else. This year we wanted to have some mares that we just felt were really strong. We may not breed a lot to Into Mischief. Mr. Hughes usually likes to collect the stud fee and make room for our clients. But now we’ve got a handful of mares that will certainly need to go to Into Mischief, Authentic and the likes of those.”

Asked about the reasoning for retiring Authentic as a 3-year-old while bringing Monomoy Girl and Got Stormy back to the racetrack in 2021 as 6-year-olds, Toffey offered, “You’re talking about a little different price point. We were wide open in terms of what we might do, but his racing career just went so well and Bob [Baffert] said, ‘He’s done so much. He’s done everything that he really can.’ And our primary business is breeding. That’s what drives things here and the stallion complex is the epicenter of Spendthrift. That is our primary focus and everything we do revolves around that. He’s such a sound, talented horse, it was very tempting to go on and run next year, but again, this is such a central part of what we do, we felt like it was time for him to come and start his career here.”

Elsewhere on the show, the writers debated which Eclipse categories are still to be decided, appreciated strong 2-year-old performances from the weekend and, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, broke down the latest developments in the indictments surrounding Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

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Feds: More Doping Charges Could Be in Pipeline

The federal prosecutor leading the case against an alleged network of racehorse dopers underscored several times during a Nov. 17 court hearing that the government might not yet be done bringing new charges that could involve either existing or fresh defendants as it continues to investigate a purported years-long conspiracy to manufacture, mislabel, rebrand, distribute and administer performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds across America and in international races.

“There may well be other crimes as to the particular defendants in this case,” United States Attorney Andrew Adams said in response to a direct question on that topic from U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil. “And [the government] is continuing to look at other people who are not currently charged.”

During the Tuesday morning teleconference, 14 defendants pleaded “not guilty” to updated charges in US. District Court (Southern District of New York) stemming from a Nov. 5 superseding indictment that replaced an original indictment filed after a wave of arrests in March.

The headline Thoroughbred industry defendants in the case are the now-barred but formerly above-norm-win-percentage trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro.

A dozen other alleged co-conspirators either appeared via phone or had pleas entered by their attorneys on Tuesday. They include drug manufacturers, distributors, stable employees, and veterinarians allegedly involved to various degrees in the five counts listed in the indictment. They are: Erica Garcia, Christopher Oakes, Michael Tannuzzo, Marcos Zulueta, Rebecca Linke, Kristian Rhein, Michael Kegley, Jr., Alexander Chan, Seth Fishman, Jordan Fishman, Lisa Giannelli, and Rick Dane, Jr.

In addition, five individuals named in the original March indictment were not included in the superseding indictment, which has led to speculation that they could be cooperating with law enforcement authorities to widen the case in exchange for having charges dropped. Two other defendants pleaded guilty in September.

On Tuesday Adams revealed that prosecutors now believe that at least two of the alleged conspirators–Chan and Rhein–were pushing some fake PEDs to Servis that didn’t really enhance performance. But, the prosecutor added, the government will be treating those substances as if they were actual PEDs because Servis’s true intent was to allegedly dope horses.

Adams explained that the recently added wire fraud charges alleged against those three defendants were brought to light by investigators who uncovered “a false billing scheme relating to certain drugs being administered by Dr. Rhein’s veterinary practice, including to horses under the care and training of Mr. Servis.” He added that it amounts to false billing when “certain drugs were promoted or intended to be used as performance-enhancing drugs, regardless of the efficacy of those drugs.”

The prosecutor then elaborated: “That is, a drug that is promoted and intended to be a performance-enhancer but is, you know, a dud, is nevertheless [considered to be] a misbranded an adulterated drug for the purposes of this indictment…”

And because those allegedly false billing transactions purportedly were conducted via some form of phone, text, or email communications, they constitute wire fraud, the government is alleging.

When Judge Vyskocil asked Adams point-blank to name the victims who were allegedly defrauded via the five counts in the indictment, Adams did not hesitate to answer.

“Horse owners are among the primary or intended victims,” with regard to the wire fraud charges, Adams said.

“With respect to misbranding, the racetracks, racing commissions, owners [and other] competitors are all among people who were in the minds of the defendants charged with the misleading and deceit,” Adams added.

The news that more charges and/or yet another expanded time frame for the alleged crimes could be in the pipeline was not welcomed by defense attorneys, who have already lodged concerns about the massive volume of electronic evidence being introduced in the case and how an elongated discovery and pre-trial period is not in the best interest of their clients’ right to a speedy trial.

“We do continue to investigate and continue to look into all aspects of the case,” Adams said when pressed by the judge for some sort of timeline on potential future charges. “The wire fraud that has come down now is largely the fruit of investigations that straddled the original indictments. It was built on information from both before and after. And I don’t leave aside the possibility that that may happen again, with respect to other false billing practices.”

Servis’s attorney, Rita Glavin, said she wanted a more definitive answer so she could make the best defense possible for her client without having to start all over if new charges got levied against him. She asked Adams, “Does the government, as we sit here today, think it’s likely that there will be a superseding indictment in the next four to five months?”

Adams replied, “The government is not under an obligation to answer that question. And it frankly will not impact, in the government’s view, any timelines set for Mr. Servis.”

Glavin countered: “Today is the first that I’ve heard from the government a whisper that there may be another superseding indictment. And I understand the government’s representation that they don’t believe it would impact Mr. Servis. But I would have to see that when I see it. I don’t know what their current investigations are. But I certainly would be concerned about setting a schedule in the case if we’re going to see new charges come out.”

Despite the open-ended nature of the ongoing investigation and the mounting reams of evidence it is generating, Vyskocil declined to set a deadline for discovery. The judge did, however, aim to set a timetable for future proceedings that allowed the defense proper time to sift through all the relevant materials during the discovery period and to potentially file motions based on what attorneys uncover.

So a Feb. 5 date has now been set for the first round of what the judge termed as “dispositive motions” that the defense could file to put an end to some or all of the charges against defendants. The prosecution would then have a month to reply (Mar. 5), and the defense would get three additional weeks to counter those replies (Mar. 26).

A second round of motions dealing only with defense requests to suppress evidence or expert testimony now has a May 24 target deadline, but a status hearing scheduled 10 days before then will determine if that is a realistic date.

Vyskocil said at this point, it would be “premature” to even consider a pre-trial schedule that extends beyond the time frame of next spring.

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Waiting For New Defendants In Federal Case? You Could Be Waiting A While

Not for the first time, prosecutors hinted Tuesday that there could be additional indictments or additional co-defendants coming in the bombshell federal drug misbranding case from earlier this year — but again, they declined to commit to a timeframe about when any additional action could be coming.

The case focuses on an alleged horse doping ring that prosecutors say included trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro, among others. A superseding indictment released earlier this month revised charges slightly, adding a wire/mail fraud charge against one subgroup of defendants and leaving out several defendants who had been named in the original documents unsealed in March. It remains unclear whether the defendants not named in the new indictment plan to enter guilty pleas. All defendants, either through Tuesday's telephonic conference or through their attorneys, entered pleas of not guilty to the charges in the new indictment.

Read more about the superseding indictment here.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. Adams had emphasized in previous conferences that the government's investigation is ongoing and he does not know what new information could still come to light. Defense counsel for Jason Servis and Dr. Seth Fishman expressed frustration with the open-ended nature of Adams' summary of the case, asking U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil to set deadlines for the government to produce any further superseding indictments. Vyskocil declined to do so. Adams emphasized that his office did not anticipate any new indictments or new defendants would serve to slow down the existing case.

Adams also took a moment to highlight one distinction he said the government made in its superseding indictment about the types of substances described in the charges. Adams pointed out that it will not be up to the government to show whether or not the drugs named were effective at manipulating a race outcome.

“A drug that is promoted and intended to be a performance enhancer, but is a dud, is nevertheless a misbranded/adulterated drug for the purposes of this indictment and the intent remains the same for the creation and administration of those drugs,” said Adams.

Much of the discussion Tuesday focused on the difficulty of the enormous volume of evidence defense counsel must sort through as they prepare their various pre-trial motions. Adams said his office is making every effort to turn over as much information as possible well ahead of the timeframes normally required of prosecutors in this type of case, specifically so there will be as few large caches of data to go through as possible later on. Adams said his office is still in possession of nine electronic devices seized at the time of the defendants' arrest in March which experts are struggling to unlock and access and he does not know when or whether that information will become available to him.

There are a number of requirements in place for the government to provide evidence in its possession to the defense ahead of trial. That evidence is going through an expert whose job it is to identify any disclosure issues with the evidence, help to organize it, and provide it to the many defense attorneys involved — which avoids technical issues with the evidence, but also slows the process.

By all accounts, there are hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, transcripts, records, receipts, emails, and other evidence already disclosed in this case — terabytes of digital information. Fishman's attorney also revealed there were a number of drug test results and communications with the Hong Kong Jockey Club's drug testing lab as part of that evidence, though he did not expand further on what those results were.

Partially as a result of that volume of evidence, the timeline for the case was laid out only in part by Vyskocil Tuesday. Attorneys were asked to provide their first round of motions by Feb. 5; that first round is likely to include motions from defense attorneys to dismiss all or parts of the superseding indictment. The first round of motions is likely to be considered by the court at some point in April, with May as a possible target for a second round of attorney motions. Those dates could be revised further, depending on how much new evidence surfaces in the meantime.

Last week, a status conference for drug maker Scott Mangini set tentative deadlines for attorney motions and a trial date of May 10. Mangini's case also had a superseding indictment filed which did not substantially change the charges against him but which removed previous co-defendant Scott Robinson from his case. Robinson entered a plea in the case earlier this fall.

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NY Horses from Federally Indicted Trainers Were Positive for Clenbuterol at 77%

Beyond the relatively obscure and exotic performance-enhancing drugs allegedly administered to the Thoroughbreds of federally indicted trainers who were charged in March in a years-long doping racket, subsequent testing on the New York contingent of those horses revealed 77% of them had clenbuterol in their systems.

And because medical records associated with those Thoroughbreds didn’t indicate that drug was administered for its intended purpose (to treat a medically legitimate airway disease), New York State Gaming Commission equine medical director Scott Palmer, VMD, said that the study he conducted on that set of horses offers proof that clenbuterol has been widely abused to bulk up horses, allowing their trainers to gain a pharmaceutical edge that makes the animals stronger and faster.

Palmer’s comments came during a Nov. 11 video press conference hosted by stakeholders and regulators who make up a Mid-Atlantic alliance of racing interests. His revelations about clenbuterol were just one example of how that group has been advancing a safety-centric agenda aimed at reducing equine fatalities in the region, which includes racing jurisdictions in New York, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.

That study on clenbuterol that Palmer worked on also bolstered the Mid-Atlantic alliance’s recent push to eliminate the allowable race-day threshold for clenbuterol. On Oct. 22, the Maryland Racing Commission took the first steps toward turning that initiative into a new rule, and Palmer said on Wednesday other regional states are in the pipeline to follow.

Trainer Jason Servis, Jorge Navarro, and 22 others in both the Thoroughbred and Standardbred industries are facing federal charges in an alleged “widespread, corrupt scheme” dating to at least 2017 that centers on a vast network of co-conspirators who purportedly manufactured, mislabeled, rebranded, distributed and administered performance-enhancing drugs to racehorses all across America and in international races.

Palmer explained that when the indictments and arrests were first made public back in March, he took it as an opportunity to try and detect what other, more commonplace, substances were being used as performance-enhancers. He said he suspected clenbuterol because of the bronchodilator medication’s well-known, off-label potential for abuse as a substance that delivers similar lean muscle-building results as anabolic steroids.

“There was a whole list that the FBI generated through wiretapping these people that came up with a lot of medications,” Palmer said. “When I reviewed that list, certainly a lot of it looked to me like a ‘snake-oil’ situation where I wasn’t convinced that the things on that list were really making much of a [performance enhancement] difference. But I was concerned that there were other things that might be given to these horses that didn’t show up on the indictment list that could be a big factor.

“One of them was clenbuterol,” Palmer continued. “Clenbuterol is a drug that has, in addition to its ability to affect lower airway disease and improve it, [an ability to act as] a repartitioning agent [that] is used in humans for body-building effects. It’s basically an end-run around on our anabolic steroid ban, and so I was very interested in proving that.”

Palmer said he required New York-based Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds from the barns of indicted trainers to be placed on the stewards’ list, adding that other jurisdictions did the same. Specimen samples were taken, the horses had to be out of competition for about a month while analysis was performed, and then had to have workouts approved by a commission veterinarian and pass yet another drug test before they would be allowed to race for new conditioners.

This process took about 60 days total, and Palmer said that in New York, nearly 200 Standardbreds and almost 100 Thoroughbreds were tested twice in this manner.

“In the Thoroughbred breed, 77% of those horses [initially] had levels of clenbuterol in their blood,” Palmer said. “[We then] asked for the medical records on these horses. We haven’t gotten through them all yet, but we haven’t found any that had clenbuterol administration listed in their medical records. That’s a strong indication that this drug is being given for purposes other than the normal prescribed reason for giving clenbuterol.”

After years of speculation, Palmer said, “we had concrete evidence that clenbuterol was being widely abused in the Thoroughbred horses.”

Armed with that information, the Mid-Atlantic alliance of racetracks, horsemen’s groups and regulators set about making the case for stricter clenbuterol regulations.

“It’s going to be introduced in New York shortly, and it’s going to be widely adopted in the Mid-Atlantic region,” Palmer said.

Also during Wednesday’s press conference, the alliance announced that the equine fatality rate in the region has dropped from 1.78 per thousand starts in 2019 to 1.21 per thousand to date so far this year, a decrease of 33%.

“It is heartening to see that the commitment and hard work of so many in the Mid-Atlantic is bearing fruit,” said Alan Foreman, the chairman and chief executive officer of the Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association. “We have representatives from every faction of the Thoroughbred industry in the region at the table. Everyone has the chance to be heard and their specific issues considered. We are proud to say that, working together, we have been able to make significant advances on issues of medication reform and horse health.”

Among those changes, every state in the Mid-Atlantic alliance has adopted the following reforms:

A prohibition on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) “stacking” (the use of more than one NSAID in the week of a race).
Transfer of joint injection records for claimed horses.
Necropsies on equine fatalities and a mortality review board.
Voidable claim rules.

Additional reforms have been implemented in all states except West Virginia, including:

48-hour withdrawal time for NSAIDs.
Enhanced penalties for NSAID overages.
14-day withdrawal for joint injections

There is a strict prohibition on the use of bisphosphonates in all horses under the age of four throughout the region, with a total ban in place in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

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