Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil | Horse Racing Free Tips

Drug Distributor Izhaki Avoids Prison Time

Sarah Izhaki, one of 27 individuals indicted in March 2020 for their role in a horse doping scheme, was sentenced Monday to time served plus three years of supervised release. U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil could have sentenced Izhaki to a prison term of 12 to 18 months, but opted for the more lenient punishment due to extenuating circumstances that include Izhaki's poor health and what Vyskocil called a “troubled upbringing.” Two months after the indictments were announced, Izhaki attempted suicide.

During the first 12 months of her sentence, Izhaki will be confined to her home and subject to electronic monitoring.

Scott Robinson, who, like Izhaki, pled guilty to conspiring to unlawfully distribute adulterated and misbranded drugs for the purpose of doping racehorses, received a sentence of 18 months in federal prison in March.

“I want you to know how sorry and remorseful I am for the bad decisions I made,” Izhaki said through an interpreter. Vyskocil noted that Izhaki spoke fluent English, so it was not clear why she chose to use an interpreter.

“I am very sorry for the bad decisions I made against the poor animals,” she continued. “If I could do it again, I would have made different decisions. I know that my being remorseful and being sorry is not enough. The only thing I can do now is to make the right decisions moving forward.”

In the initial indictments released last year, the government charged that Izhaki , along with her daughter, Ashley Lebowitz, was selling misbranded versions of Epogen, a drug that is used to boost a horse's red blood cell count in order to improve endurance during a race. They had allegedly obtained the drug from a Mexico-based drug manufacturing company. Lebowitz has yet to enter a plea.

While acknowledging that Izhaki had committed a serious offense, Vyskocil repeatedly referred to Izhaki's mental and physical problems.

“In light of all of these conditions the court has serious reservations about Ms. Izhaki's ability, frankly, to cope with imprisonment,” Vyskocil said.

According to the pre-sentence report submitted by her lawyers, Izhaki, who grew up in a strict orthodox Jewish household, has dealt with a number of physical and psychological problems throughout much of her life. She was born in 1974 in Mexico and was forced to enter into a pre-arranged marriage when she was 14 and she bore a child when she was 16. Izhaki has problems with her eyesight and became legally blind at the age of 14 and has had eight cornea transplant surgeries. During a 19-month period beginning May 23, 2019, she was involved in two major car accidents, which have required additional surgeries.

Vyskocil made it clear that anyone yet to be sentenced in the case should not look at Izhaki's sentence as a benchmark.

“I recognize that there are more cases pending and people may well be looking at what the court does today, paying attention to this case and viewing it as a benchmark, a bellwether for other horse doping cases and for the abuses in the industry in general,” she said. “I want to say on the record, if you are doing that, you are making a mistake. And I say that because in the court's view the circumstances in this case are somewhat unique, a one off, and unlike some of the other cases that are pending. The sentencing guidelines do not adequately account for certain factors that are unique to Ms. Izhaki and her circumstances, including her mental and emotional condition, her serious physical health condition, her difficult upbringing, her prompt, and I will say, complete acceptance of responsibility and remorse for her conduct.”

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Judge Denies Defendant Motions To Dismiss, Request For Recusal In Federal Drugs Case

Ever since March of last year, when more than two dozen trainers, veterinarians, and others were indicted for using or selling misbranded and adulterated drugs, racing fans everywhere have been asking – when is the next round of federal indictments coming? A May 14 status conference in the case provided no more clarity on whether or when a new indictment could be filed.

U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil pressed prosecutors on the question Friday, since they – and The Jockey Club, which claims responsibility for part of the federal investigation – have talked about the possibility of a superseding indictment for months. The topic has come up in court before, since defense counsel argue they can't reasonably prepare a defense when they don't know if there are new twists coming for their clients. (A superseding indictment would replace an older indictment, and could include new charges for existing defendants, as well as the addition or removal of defendants.)

“It's certainly not our intention to announce a superseder next week or next month,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Adams. “As we sit here today I am not able to say that we are certainly or even likely to add charges in this case. This is all speculation and it need not delay moving the case forward.”

“At some point the government needs to get real and stop speculating here,” replied Vyskocil. “This case is moving forward, and I'm certainly not going to hold anything up for the government.”

Vyskocil was asked by defense attorneys to stretch out the schedule outlining when motions and responses needed to be filed in the case, as they say they're still awaiting documentation on the wire taps used by the FBI. She declined to delay things further.

Previous discussions in the case suggested that the defendants may be split into three groups and tried in three separate trials, and Vyskocil hopes the first one can begin later this year, with the other two in early 2022.

Vyskocil also reacted to a letter motion from defense attorneys requesting she recuse herself from the case, expressing frustration and disgust over the motion, which she said contained “multiple plainly false statements.” Among other things, the defense had claimed Vyskocil could not be objective because she had previously had a financial interest in the outcome of four races, in which horses she co-bred ran against trainees of indicted trainers Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis. Vyskocil pointed out that she did not own the two horses making those four starts by the time they started their careers, and that none of those four starts could have resulted in breeder awards for her.

“All of the information upon which the defense relies has been publicly available since the case was assigned to me,” she said. “This meritless motion appears to be a calculated attempt to divert attention from the serious crimes with which the defendants have been accused and to obstruct and delay the orderly administration of the case. The motion is denied as frivolous, and obvious tactical gambit to delay the determination of the defendants' motion to dismiss.”

Vyskocil said she had been close to ruling on several defendants' motions to dismiss just before receiving notification they were about to ask her to recuse herself. At Friday's hearing, she denied those motions to dismiss.

Attorneys on both sides were given 30 days to confer about the proposed defendant groupings for trial and about the expert witness list each will call. Vyskocil anticipated the next status conference would be held in early September.

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Doping Trial Likely to Get Pushed into 2022

Prosecutors in the federal case against alleged dopers Jorge Navarro, Jason Servis and 12 other defendants told the judge Friday they had no objection to the granting of yet another extension so defense attorneys can sift through the voluminous amount of evidence against their clients, a move that will likely push back the start of the long-awaited trial until 2022 at the earliest.

The May 7 letter from acting United States Attorney Audrey Strauss to U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil was filed fewer than 24 hours after defense attorneys filed their own, separate letter with the court signaling an intent to ask the judge to recuse herself from the case over alleged prejudices.

At deadline for this story, that official “Motion to Recuse” had not yet been filed, nor had the judge's purported conflicts been disclosed. But those separate letters from the defense and the prosecutors stem from discussions the parties had during a May 6 conference call, and all signs now point to the trial not starting until the two-year anniversary of the Mar. 9, 2020, arrests looms within sight.

Defense attorneys were already granted one extension two months ago to file motions to suppress evidence, which involves a massive batch of discovery documentation including transcripts of potentially incriminating phone recordings, emails and text messages.

The 14 defendants have all been implicated to various degrees in the alleged conspiracy to manufacture, mislabel, distribute and administer performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds across America and in international races.

Strauss's letter outlined a proposed timetable that would give the defense one additional month, until Aug. 27, to review and/or object to the evidence, with 90 days tacked on beyond that date to accommodate time for the prosecution to respond and for the defense to offer a standard final reply.

“The parties further conferred on the matter of expert disclosures and timing for any motions relating to the preclusion of proposed experts,” Strauss wrote. “The Government has to date identified two experts and provided summary reports relating to their anticipated testimony. No defense experts have yet been identified…Representatives of the defense have asked that deadlines for expert disclosures [be] set at the subsequent conference to be held in the Fall of 2021.”

The last status conference in the case was held in November; the next one is coming up May 14.

Servis (who transformed Maximum Security from a $16,000 maiden-claimer into a MGISW star during the time the feds collected evidence on his alleged stable-wide doping practices) and Navarro (whom the government allegedly has on tape boasting about dosing elite-level sprinter X Y Jet “with 50 injections” of PEDs prior to a win in the 2019 G1 Golden Shaheen in Dubai) are the two now-barred trainers headlining the case.

The 12 other defendants are 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.

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Judge Grants Alleged Dopers Additional Month to Examine Evidence

The judge in the federal case against 14 alleged horse dopers on Friday granted a motion by the defense to extend the time frame to file motions to suppress evidence because of the massive amount of documentation that attorneys must sift through, which includes transcripts of potentially incriminating phone recordings, emails and text messages.

“Given the volume of discovery that we are still reviewing, I respectfully request that the Phase Two Motions schedule be modified as follows: defense motions due June 28, government response due July 28, and defense replies due on Aug. 11,” attorney Rita Glavin, who represents the disqualified GI Kentucky Derby-winning trainer Jason Servis, wrote in a request to modify the briefing schedule.

Glavin wrote that the request has the support of the attorneys for the remaining 13 defendants in the alleged conspiracy to manufacture, mislabel, distribute and administer performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds across America and in international races. She added that the prosecuting attorneys have consented to the extension.

The time extension was granted Mar. 12 by U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, which effectively pushes back the start of a trial until after Labor Day.

On Mar. 9, one year to the date of the nationwide that sting resulted in the first arrests in the case, Scott Robinson, a drug manufacturer and distributor who had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding, was the first defendant to get sentenced for his crimes. A federal judge imposed 18 months in federal prison and ordered Robinson to forfeit $3.8 million in PED sales proceeds for his role in the alleged doping network. The maximum sentence for that offense is five years.

Of the remaining defendants, the headline-grabbers are Servis, who transformed Maximum Security from a $16,000 maiden-claimer into a MGISW star during the time the feds collected evidence on his alleged stable-wide doping practices, and the now-barred but formerly above-norm-win-percentage trainer Jorge Navarro, whom the government allegedly has on tape boasting about dosing elite-level sprinter X Y Jet “with 50 injections” of PEDs prior to a win in the 2019 GI Golden Shaheen in Dubai.

The 12 other defendants are drug manufacturers, distributors, stable employees, and veterinarians allegedly involved to various degrees in the five counts listed in the indictment: 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.

Right now the court case is in the midst of a preliminary round of hearing “dispositive motions” that the defense has thus far filed to try and put an end to some of the charges. A secondary round of motions dealing only with requests to suppress evidence and expert testimony is the time frame that got extended on Friday. The next status hearing in the case is May 14.

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