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Convicted Drug Distributor Robinson: “I Sold to Everybody”

Before he was caught up in the probe into performance-enhancing drugs in horse racing and arrested for selling and shipping adulterated and misbranding drugs, Scott Robinson was living large. He drove a Lamborghini and his on-line businesses that the government has charged were selling PEDs were pulling in millions. There was never any shortage of customers.

“I sold to everybody,” said Robinson, who added that he had “thousands of customers,” and not just in horse racing. Robinson said his products were bought by individuals using them with camels, racing greyhounds, racing pigeons and to people operating alpaca farms. As part of his sentence, which includes 18 months in prison, Robinson was ordered to pay a $3.8 million forfeiture.

One year to the day that the indictments against 27 individuals allegedly involved in a scheme to use performance-enhancing drugs on racehorses were announced, Robinson, a drug manufacturer and distributor, became the first of those involved in the scandal to be sentenced to prison after he pled guilty to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding. The maximum sentence for that offense is five years.

The scope of Robinson's operation, and how many trainers and veterinarians were buying his products, was one of many subjects Robinson discussed in a series of interviews with the TDN, one by phone and several by email. Robinson is currently serving his sentence at FCI Coleman Low Correctional Institute in Sumterville, Florida. Few subjects were off limits, including his client list. It includes dozens of Thoroughbred trainers and veterinarians who bought illegal drugs from Robinson, but it's a list he says he will not divulge.

“As far as telling you who I sold this to, I'm not ready to go that far,” he said. “I know my career is over, but there are people out there who still work in racing and their livelihoods are at stake. They aren't the ones that got me into this mess, so there's no reason why I should want to see them get punished for something everybody was doing.”

Robinson, who has owned and trained Standardbreds, said the government has not pressed him for a list of his clients.

His willingness to discuss his situation stems in part from the fact that he doesn't see himself as the dope-peddling fiend the government made him out to be. Rather, he says the substances he sold were not narcotics or performance-enhancing agents but products that were not harmful to the horse and contained vitamins, minerals and amino acids.

“The definition of a PED and a non-PED is a very fine line and not black and white,” Robinson said. “The government has their own definition of PEDs. I say for it to be a PED it must be a drug. I don't consider vitamins, supplements and amino acids PEDs.”

The government would beg to differ. It charged that between at least 2011 and February, 2020, Robinson sold millions of dollars' worth of PEDs to customers across the U.S. and abroad, customers whose intent was to use the drugs to improve the performances of their horses.

“Scott Robinson created and profited from a system designed to exploit racehorses in the pursuit of speed and prize money, risking their safety and well being. Robinson sold unsanitary, misbranded, and adulterated drugs, and misled and deceived regulators and law enforcement in the process,” U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said after Robinson was sentenced.

Robinson, 47, admits that he mislabeled some of his products and did not properly list their ingredients, which falls under the category of misbranding.

“If you mislabel a vitamin or supplement and not put the ingredients on it, does it classify as a PED? According to the government the answer is yes,” Robinson said. “Like I said before, it's a very complicated subject. I am remorseful for having this issue burden horse racing. I should have put a list of ingredients on all products I sold and although I would still technically be in the wrong, it would shed light on what was in it.”

So far as why his products had names like “red acid,” “Blast Off Red” and “Liquid Viagra” that implied they were PEDs, Robinson said the names were part of a marketing strategy.

“Those names just sounded sexier,” he said. “It was marketing. The names didn't accurately describe what the products were for.”

So far as how bad the problem of doping race horses is, Robinson wavers. In his initial interview with the TDN he said the situation is serious.

“More people should be indicted. Definitely,” he said, questioning why the indictments stopped after the original round in March, 2020. “I'd be lying if I said there weren't people out there who need to be stopped. There are some real bad apples out there that should be indicted. Will it happen? Only time will tell. It doesn't really affect me.”

In a follow up email, he wrote: “I personally don't think there is a lot of illegal drug use in the sport.”

Part of the problem was that Robinson's drugs proved to be undetectable, a common theme that plagues the sport. Rarely does a drug test result in a positive for anything other than overages of therapeutic medications. Robinson said that the sport needs to start using testing procedures currently in use by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) that involves the use of biomarkers. With biomarkers, scientists can retest stored urine and blood samples that were collected as much as 10 years earlier.

“It's a form of testing that is far more stringent than current testing,” Robinson said.

Robinson is scheduled to be released on Dec. 15, but is hoping he will be let out earlier and able to serve the remainder of his sentence under home confinement. So far as what's next he doesn't know.

“Everybody else in here [at the Coleman facility] can go back to doing what they did before when they get out,” he said. “When I get out, I don't have a job. This is what I did for the better part of 20 years. I've lost all of my racing licenses and I'll never again be able to own or train a horse.”

That's not likely to elicit any sympathy. Robinson knows that no matter how he spins his story he will always bear the burden of having been convicted of selling drugs that were used to dope race horses. Nor does it really matter how many others were involved and who.

“I did wrong,” he said. “I know that.”

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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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U.S. Solicitor General Urges Supreme Court To Review Murray Rojas Conviction

The United States solicitor general on Sept. 17 filed a brief recommending that the U.S. Supreme Court review the case of Thoroughbred trainer Murray Rojas, who was convicted in June 2017 on multiple charges of drug misbranding, that the judgment by the Court of Appeals to affirm the conviction be vacated and the case remanded to the trial court for further proceedings.

The brief was filed by Brian H. Fletcher, acting solicitor general of the United States; Brian M. Boynton, acting assistant U.S. attorney general and two attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The recommendation that the Supreme Court review the case was made on the basis that the trial judge in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit erred in their definition of misbranding in both the jury instructions for the Rojas trial and in the appellate decision.

Rojas was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison after a jury convicted her on 13 counts of misbranding animal prescription drugs and one count of conspiracy to misbrand. She was found not guilty on six counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Rojas received a stay on the sentence while the case was being appealed. The case was part of an FBI investigation into corruption and illegal drugging of horses at Penn National racetrack in Grantville, Pa. A number of trainers, veterinarians and racing officials pleaded guilty to various offenses. The case against Rojas is the only one that went to trial.

Robert E. Goldman, attorney for Rojas, said the “government confessed an error” in how prosecutors, the District Court judge and the Court of Appeals interpreted the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), a 1938 law that gives authority to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to oversee the safety of food, drugs and cosmetics.

Judge Sylvia H. Rambo denied Goldman's request for jury instructions to differentiate between “administering” and “dispensing” of drugs under the FDCA, and the Court of Appeals affirmed her denial.

According to the brief filed by the office of the solicitor general, “The government now acknowledges that a veterinarian who personally injects a drug into an animal under her direct care in the course of her professional practice, without first issuing a written or oral order (i.e., prescription), has not engaged in misbranding under the FDCA.

“The FDCA permits a covered animal drug to be 'dispensed only by or upon the lawful written or oral order of a licensed veterinarian in the course of the veterinarian's professional practice,'” the brief states. “If the drug is dispensed in that manner, misbranding does not occur. The plain text of that provision indicates that an animal drug may lawfully be dispensed via two different methods: either 'by a licensed veterinarian in the course of the veterinarian's professional practice' or 'upon the lawful written or oral order of a licensed veterinarian in the course of the veterinarian's professional practice. Therefore, if a veterinarian follows the first method and personally dispenses a covered animal drug in the course of the veterinarian's professional practice, no written or oral order is required.”

The jury instructions from Rambo “permitted the jury to find that the government carried its burden of proof on the third element solely by showing that the veterinarians injected covered animal drugs into petitioner's horses with a written or oral order, and without the jury considering whether the drugs were injected 'in the course of the veterinarian's professional practice,” the brief states.

Rojas was accused of having veterinarians administer medications to horses within 24 hours of a race and then falsify the dates of the treatments in violation of state racing regulations. A fellow trainer and one of the veterinarians who pleaded guilty in the case said the practice was commonplace.

The petition by Rojas was supported by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C., public policy foundation created by billionaire libertarian Charles Koch, as well as by the American Conservative Union Foundation, which among other things hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Their brief focused on what it said was “a particularly egregious example of an increasingly common and distressing phenomenon – the aggressive federal criminal prosecution of conduct that historically has been left to state and local regulatory enforcement.”

The solicitor general determines the cases for which Supreme Court review will be sought by the federal government and provides oral arguments before the Court. The recommendation for review will be moot if the Supreme Court opts not to review the case or return it to District Court for reconsideration with the amended definition for misbranding. According to a government website for the federal court system, the Supreme Court “accepts 100-150 of the more than 7,000 cases that it is asked to review each year.”

Goldman, the attorney for Rojas, said the solicitor general's brief “is not a complete victory yet, but is going in the right direction” for his client.

Solicitor General brief

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Court Of Appeals Upholds Murray Rojas Felony Conviction On Drug Misbranding At Penn National

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Monday upheld the 2017 felony conviction of trainer Murray Rojas, who was found guilty in a jury trial on 14 counts of misbranding prescription drugs over a 13-year period from 2002-14 at Penn National racetrack in Grantville, Pa.

Rojas was subsequently sentenced to 27 months of imprisonment, two years of supervised released, a $5,000 fine and $1,400 special assessment.

She was found not guilty at the trial on charges of wire fraud.

Rojas was charged as part of an FBI investigation into corruption at Penn National that yielded guilty pleas from four veterinarians, a clocker, trainer and racing office employee. Rojas is the only person charged that went to trial.

Witnesses testified that Rojas instructed veterinarians to administer medication to her horses within 24 hours of a race in violation of Pennsylvania law or that she administered the drugs herself. Veterinarians admitted they misdated treatment sheets and billing records to cover up the violations.

Rojas was denied an opportunity during the trial to put forth an expert witness who would testify that the drugs Rojas was having administered were therapeutic and not performance enhancing, but Judge Rambo ruled that was irrelevant because state law bars all drugs within 24 hours with a limited exception.

After her conviction, Rojas filed a motion for acquittal with District Court Judge Sylvia Rambo, but that motion was denied. Her attorney, Robert E. Goldman, then filed an appeal on the following grounds:

That the District Court failed to instruct the jury properly on a distinction between “administering” drugs or “dispensing” them.
That the government's evidence to convict on misbranding charges was insufficient because it did not establish Rojas dispensed drugs rather than have them administered.
That the District Court erred in permitting a Stewards Ruling to be entered into evidence
That Rojas should have been permitted to provide evidence that the drugs were therapeutic rather than performance enhancing.
That the government did not present evidence that Rojas engaged in fraud or attempted to cover up her activities, which her attorneys said was required to convict on felony charges

The Court of Appeals judges who heard the case disagreed on all five counts. Because the full court did not participate, the ruling is considered non-precedential.

The case was heard by Circuit Judges Michael A. Chagares, Anthony J. Scirica and Jane R. Roth. The government was represented by William A. Behe from the United States Attorney's Office in Harrisburg, Pa.

Rojas has the right to file for a rehearing before the Court of Appeals. If that fails, she may petition to the United States Supreme Court.

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