Kristian Rhein | Horse Racing Free Tips

With Trial Looming, Chan, Former Vet for Servis, Now Wants to Change Plea

Seven weeks before the start of the final remaining high-profile trial in the federal doping conspiracy case from 2020, the New York-based veterinarian Alexander Chan, whose client list included co-defendant trainer Jason Servis, has changed his mind about having a jury decide his fate on three felony charges for alleged participation in drug adulteration, misbranding, and wire fraud conspiracies.

On Thursday, Chan asked for and was swiftly granted a Dec. 5 change-of-plea hearing in United States District Court (Southern District of New York), at which he will likely either plead guilty to or enter into a possible plea-bargained agreement instead of going to trial.

That will leave Servis alone to face the jury when his trial begins Jan. 9.

The nationwide sweep in March 2020 has already resulted in numerous prison terms, but Servis has always been the most prominent name among the indicted individuals. He amassed gaudily high win percentages during the 2010s decade prior to getting arrested on three felony drug misbranding and conspiracy to commit fraud charges.

According to a trove of wiretap evidence (plus implicating testimony from plea-bargaining defendants who are already imprisoned) Servis allegedly doped almost all the horses under his control in early 2019, including MGISW Maximum Security, who crossed the wire first in the GI Kentucky Derby, but was DQ'd for in-race interference. One of Servis' elixirs of choice was allegedly SGF-1000, the adulterated, misbranded and purportedly performance-enhancing drug (PED).

Chan is alleged to have assisted by performing injections and hiding the charges from billing and veterinary records. It is possible that he could implicate Servis at his plea change hearing.

That's what Kristian Rhein, a veterinarian formerly based at Belmont Park, did to both Servis and Chan in August 2021 when he changed his own plea to guilty on one felony count within the federal government's sprawling prosecution of an allegedly years-long conspiracy to dope racehorses.

“I, along with Jason Servis, were leaders and organizers [of others who performed allegedly criminal actions], which included my associate, Dr. Alexander Chan…” Rhein told Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil at his 2021 plea change.

Rhein got the maximum sentence of three years imprisonment for his crimes.

Vyskocil, who sentenced Rhein, is the same judge who will hear Chan's plea change on Monday.

Rhein, Chan and Servis at various times during 2019 were recorded on wiretaps discussing aspects related to Servis's alleged doping regimen. At times the two veterinarians rationalized to each other and to Servis that if the administered substances couldn't be detected via racing commission testing, then they weren't considered illegal.

Chan had filed a motion in August 2021 to suppress the use of those wiretapped calls as evidence, but the court denied his motion.

One conversation between Chan and Servis from Aug. 14, 2019, went like this, according to court documents:

Servis: Well, is it okay to use that?

Chan: Use what?

Servis: The SGF.

Chan: Yeah, like New York rules, there is nothing like against, like it's, you know, like it says unless it's not specifically written in there then it's seven days, you know. So like, it's not illegal.

According to the original indictment, “Chan and Rhein coordinated the sourcing and administration of SGF-1000, and engaged in efforts to secretly distribute and administer adulterated and misbranded PEDs and to counsel racehorse trainers and/or owners on the use of such substances, including the covert administration of such substances to avoid detection by the FDA and state regulatory authorities. They did so in furtherance of Servis and other trainers' efforts to administer adulterated and misbranded PEDs, for the purpose of secretly enhancing race performance.

“In connection with that scheme, Chan provided false billing records that did not reflect drugs Chan had injected into racehorses under Servis' control, and falsified his own prescription records as to which of Servis' racehorses received a particular prescription drug, concealing from potential investigators the true nature and means of administration of the PEDs that Chan provided and administered at Servis' direction,” the indictment stated.

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The Week in Review: Just What is Jason Servis Thinking

A Jan. 23 trial date for the Jason Servis case was announced last week, which means in about eight months there will be some closure and Servis will learn his fate. The way he has handled things, it seems that he is at least somewhat optimistic that he will be found not guilty. If so, he is deluding himself. Everything about this case says that he has virtually no chance of being acquitted.

Which raises a question: why is he fighting this when it makes far more sense to go to the government and cut a deal that will result in less prison time?

Has Servis not been paying attention? So far, the government is undefeated, unscored upon and running up the score. They have gotten a number of people to plead guilty, including Jorge Navarro, who is rotting away in prison. Seth Fishman and Lisa Giannelli fought and took their cases to court and in both cases the jury didn't have time to order lunch before convicting them. Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, who is one tough cookie, has never shown so much as an ounce of sympathy for the dopers, alleged and otherwise.

Not that any of this should come as a surprise. Going to federal court and winning a criminal case brought by the federal government is nearly impossible. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 90% of those indicted in federal cases in 2018 pled guilty. Eight percent of all cases were dismissed and 2% went to trial. The end result is that in 2018, only 320 of 79,704 total federal defendants went to trial and won their cases, at least in the form of an acquittal.

The government's m.o. is to build cases against defendants that are so solid that a conviction is all but assured. That's the case with Servis. They say they have numerous wiretapped phone conversations in which he talks about drugging his horses. In one, he was allegedly caught saying that he gave the drug SGF-1000 to virtually all of the horses under his care. In court, when pleading guilty, veterinarian Kristian Rhein implicated Servis, testifying that he sold him illegal, performance-enhancing drugs. The prosecution has done an excellent job.

What, then, could possibly be Servis's defense? I can't even begin to think of one. I'm not a lawyer, but isn't this the very definition of being caught red-handed?

Then there's the matter of legal fees. Servis has hired a big-time lawyer in Rita Galvin, who represented former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in his battle over sexual harassment charges. The meter has been running for a long time and there's no doubt that Lawyer Galvin gets a hefty fee for her services.

The longest sentence handed out so far has been the five years given to Navarro. But for Servis, it could be far worse. In a superceding indictment issued in November, 2020, the charges of mail and wire fraud conspiracy were added to the original charges of drug adulteration and misbranding. The maximum sentence for drug adulteration and misbranding is five years. The maximum sentence for wire and mail fraud is 20 years. Now facing a possible sentence of 25 years, the 65-year-old Servis may well spend the rest of his life in prison.

If he takes the case to trial, the government has no incentive to go easy on him. If he loses, he is going to go to prison for a long time. The 25 years, or something close to it, is a possibility. That's why he needs to cut a deal. Why not ask that the mail and wire fraud charges be dropped and agree to plead guilty to the drug adulteration and misbranding charges?

Yes, Servis is innocent until proven guilty. Yes, he is entitled to his day in court. But he's heading down a path that is no doubt going to dead-end in his being convicted. Does he not realize this? Did he, after so many years of allegedly doping horses and not getting caught, come to think he is a bulletproof? This is not going to end well for him.

Short Fields in Stakes Races

Six graded stakes races were conducted Saturday and four of them had five-horse fields. The other two were the GIII Peter Pan S., which featured eight runners, and the GIII Beaugay S., which had a field of seven. The average field size for the six races was 5.83.

The most glaring example was the GI Man o'War S. It had all the elements that normally attract decent sized fields. It's a Grade I, the purse is $700,000 and it's a grass race. Still, after a scratch, only five runners went to the post.

This is an on-going problem and it's getting worse all of the time. You're even seeing a race like the GI Apple Blossom H., worth $1 million, attract only five horses.

The foal crop keeps falling and the top horses have never raced more infrequently. But there's been no adjustment when it comes to stakes racing. We're left with a situation where there are too many stakes races and not enough horses to fill them. It might be a tough ask to ask tracks to eliminate a meaningful number of their stakes races, but that's exactly what needs to happen.

Alabama-Bred Siblings Duke It Out

You probably haven't been paying much attention to the Alabama breeding program, which has been hanging on by a thread since the Birmingham Turf Club closed years ago. But there still is such a thing as an Alabama-bred and with no racing in the state they occasionally show in special races carded just for them in Louisiana. That was the case Saturday night at Evangeline Downs, which produced a racing oddity. Three of the five starters in the $25,000 race were full-siblings. Two Mikes N Doc G, Liken It and Kellys the Boss are all by Doc N Bubba G out of the mare Ausbrook and were bred by Kent and Lisa Gremmels. They finished behind Foolish Steve (Mosquiot). Among the brothers and sisters, Two Mikes N Doc G fared best, finishing third.

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Do 2021 Handle Figures Tell the Whole Story?

The Week in Review, by Bill Finley

The announcement from Equibase that handle on U.S. racing in 2021 set a nine-year high with over $12 billion bet was understandably well received. During a year where an awful lot went wrong for the sport, at least the wagering numbers were healthy.

But, and sorry to rain on the parade, we need more information before we can celebrate.

How much was bet is only part of the story. We need to know where the bets were made and by whom. If the increase was the result of such things as added TV exposure for the NYRA races on Fox Sports or sports bettors gravitating to racing or an overall increase in the sport's popularity, then this is a very positive story. But if the added handle was the result of high-volume players who use computer programs to make their bets increasing their level of wagering in 2021, then the picture is an entirely different one. We just don't know.

“It's better that the numbers go up rather than down, but what is the context on this realistically?” said Pat Cummings, the executive director of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, who estimates that computer-assisted wagering (CAW) players account for 35% of the total handle in the U.S. “These numbers get put out there in this broad context and that's all it is. So anyone that wants to take a victory lap on them can take a victory lap on them. But they are totally lacking an understanding of the greater detail of the business. It would be like saying you lost 20 pounds during the year, but ignoring the fact that your cholesterol went up 100 points. It's impossible to quantify how good or, potentially, how bad this is.”

This is pari-mutuel wagering, where the successful bettors feast off of the unsuccessful ones. It's their money that they are winning, not the house's money. With the CAW phenomenon, betting on the horses has turned into a matter of the whales vs. minnows or the CAW bettors vs. everyone else. The whales have been gobbling up the minnows, and after a while all the minnows will be gone. This is a serious threat to the long-term viability of the sport. If the CAW players bet more than ever in 2021, well, that's a big problem.

In a perfect world, there would be transparency and we would know exactly where the handle is coming from. How much was bet on-track or at brick-and-mortar OTBs or simulcasting outlets, with ADWs like NYRA Bets and TwinSpires, and how much was bet by the CAW players?

We're never going to find out. Based on the estimate that 35% of all bets made in the U.S. were made by CAW players, that means the computer players wager at least $4 billion a year. With a few exceptions, tracks and other wagering outlets will never turn away their business and neither will they divulge any pertinent information. That's understandable. The CAW customers want to maintain their privacy and the tracks and betting outlets don't want competitors to know their business.

Perhaps the gains made in betting in 2021 had nothing to do with CAW players. We just don't know. It would be nice if we did.

Field Size Shrinks Again

The Equibase year-end release of racing's economic indicators also included the nugget that average field size in 2021 was 7.3 starters per race. That was a 7.2% decline from 2020 and a 2.08% drop from 2019. While those drops alone aren't alarming, it was the smallest average field size since the Jockey Club started keeping records in 1950. As recently as 2011, the average field size was 8.04. This isn't good and there is nothing to suggest it will get better any time soon.

Peruvian Trainers Hits 10,000 Milestone

Trainer Juan Suarez won five races on Saturday at Hipodromo de Monterrico in Lima, Peru to become the first trainer worldwide to have 10,000 career winners. Entering Sunday, Steve Asmussen had 9,592 winners.

Over the last five years, Suarez is averaging 315 wins a year, while Asmussen is averaging 390. That means Asmussen will likely chip away at Suarez's lead but could spend years trying to catch him. The main advantage Asmussen has is his age. He is 16 years younger than Suarez and will surely outlast him.

The Flightline Watch

Trainer John Sadler has yet to decide where budding superstar Flightline (Tapit) will run next after his ultra-impressive win in the GI Runhappy Malibu at Santa Anita. But he has ruled out a start in either the G1 Saudi Cup or G1 Dubai World Cup. Sadler has mentioned the GI Metropolitan H. and the GI Pacific Classic as possible starts for Flightline.

Kristian Rhein and the “Assloads” of SGF-1000

Kristian Rhein, a suspended veterinarian formerly based at Belmont Park, was sentenced last week to three years in prison for his role in the conspiracy to dope horses that also involves Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro. Rhein was caught on a wiretap bragging that he sold “assloads” of the prohibited medication SGF-1000 not just to Servis but to other trainers.

Rhein isn't the first drug distributor or manufacturer to plead guilty and, surely, every one of them were peddling their drugs to a lot more than just Servis and Navarro and the other trainers who have been indicted. A check of Rhein's records alone could yield dozens of names of trainers who were using SGF-1000 and, therefore, cheating.

Will there be more indictments, maybe many more, to come? I'm beginning to think that it's not going to happen, that the FBI and the Department of Justice are ready to move on to matters more important to them than horse racing. But that shouldn't mean the story ends there. Will any state racing commissions investigate, ask the FBI to share their information, interview Rhein and the others? It's horse racing. Probably not.

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SGF-1000 Salesman Kegley Gets 30 Months in Prison

Michael Kegley, Jr., the former sales director for the company that sold the purportedly performance-enhancing drug (PED) SGF-1000 that is at the heart of a years-long investigation of an international racehorse doping conspiracy, got sentenced to 30 months in prison on Thursday.

Kegley, 41, had pleaded guilty in July 2021 to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding. He had admitted in open court at that time that as sales director for the Kentucky-based MediVet Equine, he sold SGF-1000 and other products to trainers and veterinarians, knowing that there was “no medical prescription for those products” and that the substances were “not manufactured in an FDA-approved facility [nor] approved for sale by the FDA.”

Kegley's Jan. 6 prison sentence was six months shy of the maximum allowable term under federal sentencing guidelines. Just 24 hours previous to his sentencing, the same judge in the same court had handed down a maximum sentence for similar charges to Kristian Rhein, the defendant who is both Kegley's business associate and brother-in-law.

On Jan. 5, Rhein, a suspended veterinarian formerly based at Belmont Park who married Kegley's sister, got sent to prison for three years by Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil in United States District Court (Southern District of New York).

Prosecutors had previously acknowledged in a sentencing recommendation that Kegley should get a somewhat lighter sentence than his brother-in-law because of Rhein's standing as a veterinarian.

“Unlike Kegley, Rhein was a licensed veterinarian who predominantly treated racehorses; as such, Rhein was a more sophisticated actor than Kegley, and well-acquainted with the various legal regimes governing the sale and distribution of an adulterated and misbranded drug,” the government stated in its sentencing recommendation. “Likewise, Rhein, unlike Kegley, personally administered SGF-1000 to racehorses, concealed bottles of that drug, instructed others to do the same, and falsely billed customers for SGF-1000 under a false billing code.”

As a condition of Kegley's plea-bargained sentence, he was required to forfeit $3,310,490, which is a sum equal to the amount of the illegal substances seized by the government. But a court order accompanying the sentence stated that Kegley will only have to pay $192,615 if he does so within two years of his release from prison. If Kegley does not pay that amount by that time, he will be liable for the full sum.

One admitted doper of Thoroughbreds, the former trainer Jorge Navarro, last month got sentenced to five years in prison for administering myriad alleged PEDs, including SGF-1000.

Another barred trainer under indictment for alleged doping, Jason Servis, is scheduled to face trial in early 2022. Prosecutors have produced numerous intercepted communications involving Servis discussing using SGF-1000 on “almost every” horse under his care, including the disqualified 2019 GI Kentucky Derby winner Maximum Security (New Year's Day).

In one wiretapped call from July 16, 2019, Rhein and Kegley discussed how Servis and his associates were “buying literally as much” SGF-1000 as Rhein was able to source from MediVet.

It was further alleged that MediVet later in 2019 attempted to trick the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC) into delisting SGF-1000 as a prohibited substance after Kegley's firm had already “reaped millions of dollars in revenue” by selling it illegally.

According to the government's evidence, MediVet and its associates emphasized “the potent effects of SGF-1000,” which were supposedly derived from “an innovative formulation consisting of Regenerative Proteins, Cytokines, Peptides, potent Growth Factors and Signaling Molecules derived from Ovine Placental Extract.”

Court documents filed by the feds had stated that SGF-1000 was explained to trainers as being similar to a vasodilator that would “increase stamina, performance, and overall health.” The materials even listed the growth factors that were purportedly found in SGF-1000, including some that were explicitly prohibited in many major racing jurisdictions.

The feds also alleged that despite what Kegley, Rhein, and other MediVet representatives claimed when they were parroting the company's marketing materials, no one pushing the product really had any accurate idea of what was in it.

“Notably, Kegley and his coconspirators did not know the precise contents of SGF-1000 until at least in or about August 2019–years after MediVet had started marketing and selling the drug,” court documents stated. “But [they] believed that no matter the component parts of the drug, it would enhance a horse's performance.”

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