Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil | Horse Racing Free Tips

Jury Selection Process Begins for Fishman Trial

The Jan. 19 selection of jurors for the federal horse-doping trial of Dr. Seth Fishman and Lisa Giannelli was extended into at least a second day when only 37 of 75 potential jurors were questioned inside a lower Manhattan courthouse.
U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil called for an end to the marathon nine-hour session at about 6 p.m. ET, ordering the jurors who had yet to be interviewed to return to the same Southern District of New York court by 9:30 a.m. Jan. 20.

The interview process consisted of 72 questions posed to the possible jurors, asking about a wide topic of subjects, including their knowledge of horse racing, ownership of pets, gambling, medications, feelings about veterinarians, and their background. These questions were asked to learn if any of them had personal conflicts that would prevent them from viewing the court case fairly and impartially.

Nine of the persons interviewed Wednesday were excused for a variety of reasons.

Of the 37 questioned, the only potential juror who said he follows horse racing closely at the present time was excused after he voiced concerns about judging the case without a bias.

Fishman and Giannelli are facing federal charges for allegedly working through a company called Equestology to sell adulterated and misbranded performance-enhancing drugs to clients in the horse racing industry.

Fishman and Giannelli are part of the March 9, 2020, indictments that also snared trainers Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis. Fishman is charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit drug adulteration and misbranding while Giannelli is facing one count of misbranding conspiracy.

The Thoroughbred industry's leading publications are working together to cover this key trial.

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Max Prison Sentence for Vet Rhein

Kristian Rhein, a suspended veterinarian formerly based at Belmont Park who was caught on a wiretap bragging that he sold “assloads” of SGF-1000 to racehorse trainers, was sentenced to three years imprisonment Wednesday after pleading guilty to one felony charge within the federal government's sprawling prosecution of an allegedly years-long conspiracy to dope racehorses.

Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil imposed the maximum-allowable prison term under federal sentencing guidelines Jan. 5 in United States District Court (Southern District of New York).

According to the court order filed in conjunction with his sentencing, Rhein is to report to a to-be-determined prison

Mar. 7. Vyskocil recommended that he serve his term in the medium-security Otisville, New York, facility about 60 miles north of his Long Island residence.

As part of his plea agreement, Rhein also must forfeit to the U.S. the criminally gained proceeds that are directly traceable to his offense, which he agreed totaled $1,021,800. He had previously been ordered to pay at least $671,800 of that amount before or on his sentencing date.

Rhein also must pay $729,716 in restitution to an undisclosed list of victims, the names of whom were filed under seal and thus inaccessible to the general public.

When Rhein spoke in open court back in August to change his plea to “guilty” on one count of drug adulteration and misbranding, he directly implicated five others, most notably co-defendant Jason Servis, the now-barred trainer who was his regular client and allegedly administered purportedly performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) like SGF-1000 to practically every Thoroughbred under his control.

Rhein, 49, began his veterinary career in 2002 and soon specialized in racehorse treatment. He started a practice at Belmont Park in 2015. In 2017, he partnered to form a bloodstock services company, Empire Thoroughbreds.

Five of 27 defendants named in the original indictment have now been sentenced after pleading guilty to charges in the federal government's prosecution of an alleged “corrupt scheme” to manufacture, mislabel, rebrand, distribute, and administer PEDs to racehorses all across America and in international races. Trials for the remaining defendants, including Servis, are scheduled to commence in 2022, possibly as early as this month.

Scott Robinson, a former veterinarian, was the first to be sentenced in March 2021. In addition to his 18 months in prison, he had to forfeit $3.8 million in profits.

In June, Sarah Izhaki was sentenced to time already served plus three years of supervised release for selling misbranded versions of Epogen.

In September, Scott Mangini, a former pharmacist who had pled guilty to one felony count related to creating custom drugs for racehorses, got sentenced to 18 months in prison. As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors also demanded a forfeiture order from Mangini in the amount of $8.1 million.

In December, the barred trainer Jorge Navarro wept in court after Vyskocil handed down a maximum-allowable sentence of five years imprisonment. Navarro had pled guilty to one count of conspiring with others to administer non-FDA-approved, misbranded and adulterated drugs, including PEDs that Navarro believed would be untestable and undetectable.

Navarro has also been ordered to pay $25.8 million in restitution to the owners, trainers and jockeys he defeated from 2016 to when he was arrested in March 2020. That money–if Navarro ever has the resources to pay it–is to be deposited into an escrow fund that theoretically would get disbursed to racetracks to use in the form of compensatory purses.

Michael Kegley Jr., the former sales director for MediVet Equine, the Kentucky-based company that marketed and sold SGF-1000, will be the next guilty-pleading defendant to be sentenced by Vyskocil, on Jan. 6.

According to court document field by federal prosecutors, Rhein and Kegley worked in tandem to extoll “the performance-enhancing benefits of [SGF-1000] to racehorse trainers.” Like Rhein, Kegley's maximum possible sentence has been calculated to be three years in prison.

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Navarro Gets Maximum Prison Sentence of Five Years

NEW YORK–Jorge Navarro, who catapulted to the top of the trainer ranks thanks to his widespread use of an arsenal of illegal, performance-enhancing drugs, was sentenced to five years in prison Friday by Judge Mary Kay Vsykocil of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Five years was the maximum sentence allowed after Navarro pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit drug adulteration or misbranding.
Navarro, 46, is scheduled to begin his prison sentence on or around Feb. 15. It has yet to be determined where he will serve his sentence.
Navarro's attorney Jason Kreiss asked Vsykocil to sentence his client to four years, but ran headfirst into a judge who was in no mood to show Navarro any leniency. Rather, she continually lashed out at the disgraced former trainer, calling him a callous, calculating cheater who showed no regard for the well-being of the Thoroughbreds under his care. Vsykocil went so far as to declare that she wished the applicable laws allowed her to sentence Navarro for more than five years.
“For years, Mr. Navarro, you effectively stole millions, cheating other trainers, owners and jockeys you competed against,” she said. “You also demonstrated, Mr. Navarro, a collective, callous disregard for the well-being of the horses. The bottom line is you likely killed or endangered the horses in your care.”
Navarro's defense team tried to portray him as someone who, despite the charges against him, loved horses. Vsykocil wasn't buying it.
“The reality is someone who loves horses does not subject them to such cruel and dangerous treatment,” she said.
She also brought up the brazen manner in which he operated. In their pre-sentencing letter, government lawyers said that Navarro “considered his prolific doping a badge of honor.”
“You were so open, so brazen about your crimes that you were dubbed 'The Juice Man' and even kept in your barn a pair of Crocs that had the words 'Juice Man' running across the toes,” she said.
The hearing, which lasted about 90 minutes, began with government lawyers laying out their case as to why Navarro deserved the maximum sentence. U.S. Attorney Sarah Mortazavi said that Navarro's “career as a racehorse trainer was a sham based on a fraudulent scheme” and called him “unprincipled and dangerous.” Kreiss maintained that Navarro was a skilled horseman who succumbed to the pressures of his profession and made some bad choices.
Mortazavi zeroed in on the case of XY Jet (Kantharos), who Navarro drugged before a Feb. 13, 2019 allowance race at Gulfstream and also before his victory in the G1 Dubai Golden Shaheen in Dubai. Two weeks after his final career start, XY Jet died, which Navarro claimed at the time was due to a heart attack.
“It was tragic what happened to XY Jet, but not surprising,” Mortazavi said. “He was dead of a heart attack two weeks after his last race. That was a potent reminder of Navarro's hypocrisy.”
Navarro entered the courtroom surrounded by his wife and several other family members. When it came his time to address the court, he grew emotional, openly crying.
“I was hungry to be a winner and somewhere along the line the pressure got to me,” he said. “I thought I had to win to be respected in the horse racing industry. I became a selfish person who only cared about winning and I lost my way. I chose to become a horse trainer because of my love for the horse. It was the horses that brought me my greatest joy. I take responsibility for all that I have done and apologize to the people that I have hurt. I should have quit when I started feeling all that pressure, rather than putting the horse and the people who believed in me through this.”
Navarro has also been ordered to pay $25.8 million in restitution to the owners, trainers and jockeys he defeated from 2016 to when he was arrested in March 2020. Government lawyers revealed that Navarro is to pay that money to the racetracks he competed at during the run and the tracks will then be responsible for distributing the money. It is not clear if he has $25 million, or anything close to it, at his disposal.
Kreiss admitted that Navarro “will never be a licensed trainer in the U.S. ever again.” But much of his future remains murky. He will be subject to three years of supervised release after finishing his sentence, but Kreiss reiterated his belief that Navarro, who is not a U.S. citizen, will eventually be deported to his native Panama. Navarro has been in the U.S. for 35 years and has said he has no connections to anyone in Panama. Because of his immigration status, he cold also be sent to a prison under the control of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rather than to a federal minimum-security prison in Florida, where he is now residing.

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Judge: ‘Wiretapping Is Appropriate to Investigate Conspiracies’

The judge in the federal doping conspiracy case used words like “frivolous” and “weak” to swat away motions made by seven defendants to suppress wiretap and other electronic evidence in trails that are expected to commence in 2022.

The opinion and order filed Dec. 8 by Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil in United States District Court (Southern District of New York) follows a verbal ruling she made Nov. 4 during a status conference that denied all of the related motions made during the late summer by Jason Servis, Seth Fishman, Lisa Giannelli, Erica Garcia, Michael Tannuzzo, Alexander Chan and Rick Dane, Jr.

“The Court has considered all of the arguments raised in all of the suppression motions filed in this case and has concluded that none warrants the suppression of evidence or a hearing,” Vyskocil wrote. “To the contrary, based on the Court's careful review of the application for each challenged wiretap order and search warrant, there is no question that the issuing judicial officer in each instance had a substantial basis for the finding of probable cause.”

Some of the challenged evidence included conversations recorded off the phone of now-barred trainer Jorge Navarro, who has since pleaded guilty to one count in the years-long Thoroughbred drugging conspiracy.

Intercepted calls included statements about Navarro obtaining and/or using purported performance-enhancing equine drugs, such as an unregulated version of clenbuterol, “trays of red acid,” and “24 bottles” of a substance. Other evidence included Navarro discussing the “doping and hiding” of a horse, the use of a “shock machine,” and even the now-infamous Monmouth Park video recorded by a bar patron in which Navarro celebrated a 2017 win by boasting about “juicing” horses.

“In challenging the Navarro wiretaps, the defendants unpersuasively attempt to 'dissect' the affidavits and argue that individual pieces of evidence did not establish probable cause,” Vyskocil wrote. “Garcia, joined by Tannuzzo and Servis, argues that the government did not establish that the aforementioned '24 bottles' were a prohibited substance. The government was not required to prove, in an application for a wiretap, that when Navarro said, 'Grab me…24 bottles,' he conspired to purchase and use a prohibited substance. Rather, it was required to offer evidence that, in a 'totality-of-circumstances' analysis, there was a 'fair probability' that Navarro was involved in a horse doping fraud scheme.”

Vyskocil also noted the extensive review process that was required before numerous other judges originally signed off on those wiretaps, which occurred over the course of 18 months prior to the March 2020 arrests of several dozen alleged conspirators.

“At least 13 judges independently found probable cause to authorize 15 different applications to begin or renew wiretaps,” Vyskocil wrote. “At least 10 magistrate judges found probable cause for search warrants.”

The order continued: “The defendants also challenge the Navarro wiretaps and other wiretaps that incriminated them on the ground that the government had failed to exhaust alternative investigative techniques. Their arguments are wholly unpersuasive…. The law in this Circuit is clear that wiretapping is appropriate to investigate conspiracies where 'the clandestine nature of alleged conspiracies makes them relatively less susceptible to normal investigative techniques'…

“Moreover, the government explained, none of the confidential sources had gotten close to Navarro and approaching him at that point was more likely to raise his suspicions than yield information. Affidavits in support of other wiretap applications cited this and additional evidence that the conspirators were cognizant of the need to maintain secrecy.”

Vyskocil summed up: “Certain defendants insist that the government should have been required to do more drug testing or more extensively investigate financial records. However, the government is not required to exhaust any particular avenue of investigation before seeking a wiretap. Moreover, as various affidavits made clear, the conspirators were using drugs that were designed to be undetectable by racing industry drug tests and went to great lengths to avoid creating financial or other records.”

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