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‘Shut Him Down Before He Kills Someone’: Documents Paint Unsettling Picture On Eve Of Pharmacist’s Sentencing

As U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken prepares to sentence former pharmacist Scott Mangini on Sept. 10 as part of the federal anti-doping probe that yielded more than two dozen arrests in March 2020, documents filed by prosecutors depict an operation churning out dangerous products while ignoring and avoiding regulators' attempts to shut it down.

Mangini had worked at various times in partnership with co-defendant Scott Robinson, who earlier this year was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for drug adulteration and misbranding conspiracy.

In a letter to Judge Oetken, Mangini explains that he worked in human pharmacy at the start of his career, and also owned and trained harness horses on the side. While living in Florida, Mangini kept his horses at the South Florida Training Center in Lake Worth, and took over there as farm manager when the previous manager died. It was there he met Robinson, who was already in the business of selling what he called “horse supplements.” The two worked together under the banner of Horse Gold, then split off when Mangini launched Ergogenic Labs. Mangini supplied custom-made compounded drugs to Robinson and also sold them directly to consumers himself, under the online banners of RacehorseMeds or HorsePreRace.

Mangini depicts himself as a hard-working, hands-on horseman who was primarily interested in creating more affordable versions of recognized therapeutic drugs. His attorneys point to his loss of a young filly to equine protozoal myeloencephalitis (EPM) as the inspiration for his progression from human to equine pharmacy. Nearly a quarter of the sales of Mangini's business were for some form of omeprazole paste, while various forms of pentosan accounted for 13 percent, and EPM medications another 4.6 percent, according to documents from defense counsel.

Still, Mangini's attorneys admit, he did not apply to the Food and Drug Administration to become an authorized commercial manufacturer of these products and made them outside of federal oversight. He also falsified prescriptions to justify the compounding of some of those drugs – including “an omeprazole paste that could be used as an injectable product.” Mangini said he was offering owners “an easy, low-cost option” to get drugs like omeprazole. The FDA-approved versions cost between $30 and $36 per tube, while Mangini sold it for $9.99. The price difference was apparently attractive to “a broad cross section of animal hospitals, clinics, humane societies, animal rescues, and veterinarians and included entities that treated not just horses, but also dogs, goats, llamas, alpacas, lambs, and livestock.”

“Your honor, I am extremely sorry for breaking the law,” Mangini wrote to Oetken. “My passion in life has been to always help people and animals and hopefully I have explained that to you. I tried to justify my need to earn income based on my financial situation at the time along with using the excuse that I was simply helping horses, trainers, and owners. These laws are made for a reason and there is no excuse to break the law no matter what you believe or tell yourself.”

Mangini's attorneys requested he be given a sentence of six months' home confinement.

“The products he made were safe,” Mangini's attorneys wrote. “They contained the active ingredients that were promised and advertised. And the products he sold are well-recognized as a reliable part of care for animals, including horses.”

But prosecutors say even that omeprazole paste wasn't as benign as Mangini would have the judge believe. In February 2020, an unnamed individual filed a complaint with the Food and Drug Administration about a shipment of they drug they gave to their horse.

“I ordered omeprazole oral paste from www.racehorsemeds.com and instead the syringe containing paste for a 30 days supply actually contained DMSO, which causes birth defects in humans and serious side effects to horses,” the complaint read. “It was mislabeled, placing me and my horse at risk for life threatening injuries. The owner … has been cited before. SHUT HIM DOWN BEFORE HE KILLS SOMEONE!

“I will be filing a civil federal lawsuit, but the FDA should be doing more to protect the public. This guy is not a vet or a legitimate pharmacy.”

The complainant, according to prosecutors, gave her horse the paste and saw it rapidly decline, dropping weight and ultimately requiring hospitalization.

No federal suits were filed against Mangini subsequent to the early 2020 FDA complaint.

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HorsePreRace had already received a warning letter in 2014 informing the company it needed to seek approval for the paste as a new animal drug, based on its assertions that the paste worked like approved omeprazole. Further, the FDA stated it had tested the omeprazole paste sold via HorsePreRace and found it contained only 68.1 percent of the omeprazole advertised on the label.

The person who filed the complaint wasn't the only one noticing problems with Mangini's products. As documented in the Robinson case, the two men exchanged frequent texts about customer complaints, including people reporting bugs in boxes of medication and inside injectable products. Robinson told Mangini in 2015 he had received “a bad photo of pentosan” with “shit floating in it” and “mold inside,” to which Mangini advised he ”just replace it,” blaming the quality on the customer.

“Vitamin c is exploding” Robinson informed Mangini in 2014 via text message, referring to a product quality concern.

“That's common on all of them,” Mangini replied.

It remains unclear exactly what Robinson meant.

Robinson also warned Mangini about horses who were “infected and blowing” after getting shots of “poly p” and a mare who became depressed and unable to move after getting her first injection of a pentosan product. Another customer reported two horses that were unable to walk, appearing heavily sedated for 36 hours after getting a pentosan injection, and a third said their horse had experienced a stiff neck, which their treating veterinarian suspected was caused by “some impurity in the branch.”

“Ur not turning ur inventory as fast,” Mangini texted Robinson upon hearing these complaints about pentosan. “So bottles sitting longer which makes them more susceptible – only thing I can think of but these people also to blame too.

“These Momo's [sic] have no clue on injecting.”

It was around this time Ergogenic Lab, where Mangini was making the items being sold online, received a dismal inspection from Florida's Department of Health. The compounding pharmacy had no working sink, so employees who were making sterile injectable solutions were washing their hands in a bucket. The prescription counter and floors were covered in layers of dust and unidentified powder, and one inspector said the floor was so dirty he was able to scrawl the initials 'DOH' on the floor with an alcohol swab. Ingredients, many of which Mangini imported from Wuhan, China, were mislabeled or unlabeled. The state restricted the pharmacy's licenses, and it eventually closed down. But that didn't stop Mangini.

“After receiving this report and agreeing to restrictions on his license, Mangini did not seek to reform,” the prosecutors' report read. “Instead, with little interruption, he transplanted his operations to a new location, transferred certain staff, hired new staff, and continued supplying others with adulterated and misbranded drugs (in many cases, with the exact same adulterated and misbranded drugs he had sold previously.) In other words, Mangini was undeterred.”

It's also worth noting, according to prosecutors, that Mangini's catalogue was not limited to omeprazole or EPM products. His websites also peddled injectable prescription drugs available without prescriptions, as well as proprietary products with names like Blast Off Red, Numb It, Plug It, Purple Pain, Green Speed, White Lightning, and other formulas. Those products did not come with ingredient lists but did come with claims that they “will not test” and included instructions that they should be administered four to six hours before competition – a clear violation of racing regulations in most jurisdictions. Blast Off Red was described to customers as “an extremely potent blood builder injection” while Blast Off Extreme was said to “increase the force of heart muscle contraction, thereby increasing blood flow and oxygen to the muscles in race horses, greyhound, dogs, and camels.”

Further, prosecutors revealed that RaceHorseMeds was also selling its own version of a bisphosphonate. In 2015, Dechra filed a civil lawsuit against the company in U.S. District Court in Kansas claiming patent infringement, trademark infringement, false designation, unfair competition and false advertising. Dechra is one of two companies with FDA approval to make and sell bisphosphonates for use in horses in the United States. Dechra's version, clodronate, is sold under the trade make Osphos. Dechra discovered that RaceHorseMeds was selling OsteoPhos, which was described on its website as having “the same mechanism of action as Osphos.” After Dechra emailed the company warning it of possible patent and trademark infringements, the product's name changed to OzPhoz Explosion and the reference to Osphos was removed from the description.

Ultimately, Dechra dismissed the civil case largely because it could not figure out where RaceHorseMeds was actually located or how to properly serve the principals with documents. Its website claimed RaceHorseMeds was a Panamanian company with operations in the United States and Canada. A return mailing label from one of its products listed a Kearney, Neb., address which turned out to be invaiid.

(This publication launched an investigation to try uncovering the real ownership and location of RaceHorseMeds and HorsePreRace in 2016. The resulting story was attached as an exhibit to the prosecutors' sentencing report.)

In fact, prosecutors say, Mangini and others worked very hard to make sure they were difficult to reach for this kind of correspondence. According to them, Mangini and others hired a 1099 contractor to handle outgoing shipping for them, so any mailed orders would be traced to the contractor and not the websites' owners. They misrepresented the company's location on its website and set up a corporation in the name of a co-conspirator to make it appear as though that person, and not Mangini, was the operator RaceHorseMeds.

Prosecutors are requesting a five-year prison sentence, which is the maximum allowed by law for the charge at hand.

The post ‘Shut Him Down Before He Kills Someone’: Documents Paint Unsettling Picture On Eve Of Pharmacist’s Sentencing appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Making Claims: Racing’s Villains Have Too Many Enablers

In “Making Claims,” Paulick Report bloodstock editor Joe Nevills shares his opinions on the Thoroughbred industry from the breeding and sales arenas to the racing world and beyond.

If it feels like just yesterday when Irish trainer Gordon Elliott rankled the racing world over his photo straddling a dead, prone horse, you're not off by that many yesterdays.

Elliott's six-month suspension for conduct unbecoming to the sport finished this week, and the interview he gave the Racing Post ahead of his return was eye-opening for a few reasons.

First, it sure doesn't seem like he spent a lot of time on true self-reflection during his half-year away. His self-described “lowest moment” had nothing to do with the shame he brought upon himself, his barn, and the sport on a global level, but for the horses that left his barn during his suspension that won elsewhere. He makes two attempts at a genuine apology in the Racing Post interview, and they're both in the direct vicinity of statements about how good he is at training winners, and how he'd like to get back to doing that.

Tell me you're only sorry you got caught, without telling me you're only sorry you got caught.

Second, it was revealed that he only lost about a dozen horses from his yard during the suspension. For some trainers, that could be a back-breaking defection, but Elliott has had 1,000 or more starts in each of the past five years. He lost some good ones, but 12 horses won't interrupt the flow when he returns to the racetrack.

There are several layers of blame to go around for the Gordon Elliott situation – before, during, and after the photo was released.

The center of it is, of course, Elliott himself. For a sport like horse racing that struggles with public perception, an unforced error like his is unforgivable. It will be used as fodder to tear down horse racing's credibility for years to come – much longer than the six months he spent away. The next layer is the person behind the camera, head lad Simon McGonagle. It's hard to tell your boss to stop being a bonehead, but commemorating the occasion with a photo and a snappy caption suggests at least one other person in that inner circle thought this was fine.

Once we leave that atmosphere, we come to the people who could have done something about it in the aftermath, and chose to punt the football.

The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board had a chance to show that documented desecration of the horse should have career-threatening consequences. Instead, they handed him six months – most of it during the slow part of the National Hunt season, save for the Cheltenham Festival – and praised themselves in the press release for how thorough their unannounced welfare inspections have been.

Then, there are the owners that Elliott praised for sticking with him through the suspension. If he only lost a dozen horses, then it seems most owners did stick with him.

Whether they'd admit it or not – whether they care or not – by remaining in his barn, those owners have endorsed the notion that if their horse dies in training, Elliott is perfectly within his right to use the event as a lighthearted photo opportunity.

The Gordon Elliott situation, and how it was handled, is frustrating for anyone that thinks a horse deserves better, living or dead, but what takes it to another level is the fact that we've seen it all before.

Negative actions come down to individuals making choices, but it's those two parts of the outside layer – the regulators and the owners – whose response can turn those actions into a culture in a barn, a backstretch, and ultimately an industry. It takes a village to raise a villain, and this industry has turned it into a science.

The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board's relatively light touch on Elliott calls back to any number of instances where racing commissions had the ball set on the tee for them to prove the sport won't tolerate behavior ranging from irresponsible to abusive, and instead chose the most uninspired option. When a decent lawyer and a feckless racing commission can “aw, shucks” the consequences of a serious offense into a minor inconvenience, the horsepeople that choose to misbehave have little to sway them from doing it again.

Be truthful, when is the last time you've seen a horseperson stare down a career-altering suspension for something heinous or habitual and thought, “that's definitely gonna stick”?

What's infuriating about horse racing's regulators is their enabling of bad actors can come in so many shapes and sizes. The due process of appeals and stays of suspension are frustrating from the outside, but they are a necessary part of the system. However, when a regulator neuters another regulator trying to create consequences that might actually change the culture of the sport, it ventures into craven territory.

Who can forget the reflexive disgust shown by the Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission when they watched the video of trainer Amber Cobb hitting a tied horse with a rake, then the sudden change in tone when they reduced the stewards' recommended suspension of two years down to two months because she was just so darn articulate?

Who else felt unsatisfied when the Arkansas Racing Commission gave back practically everything to Bob Baffert after lidocane positives disqualified Charlatan and Gamine from their wins, and t he justification from the board essentially came down to “we don't even really like these rules, and we hope the feds come in and clean this mess up”?

In both instances, and in others under far less of a microscope, the regulators seemed swayed by information that pulled them away from the root issue at hand, and turn on the complainant. Whether they did it or not became a secondary issue. Not every whistleblower is going to be a reliable one, but when scrutiny turns into mockery and dismissal, it emboldens future offenders and gives pause to future whistleblowers. Again, this is how cultures are created.

Of course, for every time a racing commission has shot itself in the foot to let an alleged villain get away, just as many do the wrong thing through inaction.

There are a lot of cards in the “How Does THIS Guy Still Have A License?” deck, but for the sake of moving things along, consider Marcus Vitali.

Vitali has been handed suspensions that he served to term, but he didn't let that get him down. Instead, he found ways to keep training horses and have them run in the names of others, like Wayne Potts or Allan Hunter.

It's been harder for Vitali to find places to race since he came back from his most recent time on the bench last year, but commissions in New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Arizona have licensed Vitali in 2021 after he was alleged by the Maryland Jockey Club – owners of Pimlico and Laurel Park – to be running horses in other trainers' names. His alleged accomplice, Potts, is having the most lucrative season of his career, running mostly in New York and New Jersey.

In the places where they've had the door slammed in their faces, it was usually because racetracks barred the trainers on their own volition, independent of any commission ruling. The problem is, a private property expulsion doesn't have the same reciprocity among other jurisdictions as a state-level one, leaving it up to track-by-track judgement calls, sometimes in response to public outcry.

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Through his cross-country trek in search of a racetrack that would have him, Vitali has maintained the unyielding support of some owners, including Carolyn Vogel's Crossed Sabres Farm. Nothing short of blind support would explain why the New Hampshire-based owner would not only stay with a trainer after dragging her into multiple paper training incidents and suspensions, but then entrust him to take her string to the claiming ranks at Turf Paradise – far away from the East Coast tracks where her runners were normally seen.

Again, this is how a culture is made. In a business of independent contractors, employment is endorsement, and permissive or oblivious owners can give oxygen to problematic behavior. If a trainer keeps getting supplied with horses, it's hard to get rid of them. Gordon Elliott will return to business as usual because operations like Bective Stud just kept buying horses for him to train when he got back.

It was hard not to notice who was still running horses with Baffert after the trainer announced that Medina Spirit had tested positive for betamethasone in this year's Kentucky Derby and put the sport under one of the ugliest national spotlights it's ever seen; even after it limited the places where their horses could run. As it stands right now, the expensive 2-year-olds that have kept entering Baffert's barn won't be able to run in next year's Kentucky Derby if they stay there.

It still wasn't enough for some owners to walk away. If they don't feel shame for having their names tied to scandal by association, their trainers have no incentive to feel any different.

We should all be so lucky to find that kind of loyalty in our lives.

But, that's the culture.

Individuals feel emboldened to push limits – or have a chat astride a dead horse while your buddy grabs a shot for Snapchat – because the consequences aren't enough of a deterrent, or they'll likely be walked back if they get too harsh, and too many owners are fine to go along with the ride out of some sense of loyalty, even if it drags them down with it.

It keeps happening because the people in a position to do something let it happen. It keeps hurting because we know it'll happen again.

More than ever, the world outside our sphere is watching and learning, and they're figuring out that Gordon Elliott wasn't the only one sitting on that dead horse.

The post Making Claims: Racing’s Villains Have Too Many Enablers appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Longshot Look Presented By Kentucky Downs: Finding Value In The TVG Stakes

Wednesday's card approaches the halfway point of the six-day FanDuel Meet at Kentucky Downs, and the Paulick Report is ahead of it with another Longshot Look video segment.

For each card of the meet, J.D. Fox of the Champagne and J.D. Show will single out a price play with his reasoning for what makes the horse worth a look when they might go overlooked.

On Wednesday's card, Fox turns his attention to the TVG Stakes, a one mile and 70-yard race for 3-year-olds and up that have not won a stakes race in 2021. His spotlight horse is 15-to-1 on the morning line, but he has the back class to suggest his comeback tour might make a lucrative stop in southern Kentucky.

Kentucky Downs' 2021 meet takes place Sept. 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, and 12. First post each day is at 12:20 p.m. Central.

Watch today's Longshot Look presented by Kentucky Downs below:

The post Longshot Look Presented By Kentucky Downs: Finding Value In The TVG Stakes appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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What We Learned From New Wiretap Evidence In The Federal Drug Case

Last week, prosecutors filed a 155-page response document in an ongoing fight over wiretap evidence against trainer Jason Servis and a handful of other defendants in the well-known federal drugs case. While it remains unclear when U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil will rule on a series of motions to exclude intercepted phone, text, and email conversations among the defendants, the response did include previously unpublished transcripts that shed new light on the case.

The response document addressed a series of separate and joint motions from veterinarian and drug maker Dr. Seth Fishman, drug sales representative Lisa Giannelli, Jordan Fishman, veterinarians Dr. Erica Garcia and Dr. Alex Chan, and trainers Jason Servis and Christopher Oakes. Although the defendants structured their arguments somewhat differently, they are asserting that the wire tap evidence was acquired illegally — both because FBI investigators did not use other investigative techniques available to them, and because the applications for new and ongoing surveillance were deceptive to the judges who signed off on them.

Prosecutors, predictably, dispute the defendants' assertions, citing legal standards regarding probable cause and existing evidence justifying each new request. Their response was primarily designed to address the legal arguments at hand, not specifically to reveal to the public new information about the case. For that reason, there are some snippets of transcript where names or other details are omitted or redacted, so some of the new transcripts lack context. Still, there were a few new details of interest to the racing public following the case at home.

You can read the full response document here.

Nick Surick was the origin point for some defendants in this case. When drug adulteration and misbranding charges were first announced against 27 defendants in March 2020, prosecutors said (rather cryptically) that those March arrests were the fruit of a different investigation that had bled over into horse racing. We still don't know what that investigation was, but we know that the FBI began looking at Jorge Navarro because of his association with Standardbred trainer Nicholas Surick. Navarro entered a guilty plea in August. Surick, originally charged with drug adulteration and misbranding conspiracy and obstruction, was left off a superseding indictment filed in November 2020, but his case is not listed as closed in the federal system. It remains unclear whether he has taken a deal with prosecutors. The FBI became aware of Navarro when it intercepted its communications with Surick in January 2019, at which point it had been investigating Surick “and others” for “months.”Navarro is framed in the document as “both a facilitator of Surick's doping activities and as a kind of doping 'mentor.'” Navarro and Surick had conversations about Northern Virgin, a horse Surick allegedly hid twice from racing officials in order to avoid their taking an out-of-competition sample from the horse. Surick said he had administered a blood builder to the horse relatively recently when they arrived to test the horse.
Navarro and Servis may have had help from track security to conceal their doping activities. The document contains a number of transcripts of conversations between Navarro and Servis as they compared doping programs and shared information about testing and security. Each of them made reference to having connections with individuals in racetrack security who let them know when searches were imminent. The document does not specify who those individuals may be or which racetrack one or both connections were located.
Servis' program involved two versions of clenbuterol. Conversations between Navarro and Servis also refer to “regular” clenbuterol and “other” clenbuterol, which they believe have different detection times in drug tests. Prosecutors say that both versions of clenbuterol were used without valid prescriptions. It's never specified what the difference is between the two, but regulators have reported finding compounded clenbuterol in the course of investigations which is designed to be significantly more potent (ten times more potent, in some cases) than the commercially-available, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved version. Prosecutors speculate that the use of clenbuterol, which is considered a legitimate therapeutic drug, in this context is likely to point to abuse of the drug for its anabolic effects.
Dr. Kristian Rhein may have been party to questionable activities beyond the scope of this case. Rhein, who was the track veterinarian for Servis and many others, entered a guilty plea in this case in late July and agreed to forfeit more than $1 million of proceeds he generated from illegal drug sales. Apparently, he knows where some metaphorical bodies are buried on the backstretch — in an intercepted conversation with Servis, Rhein recalled an unnamed individual whom Servis had been complaining about.”He is such a little bitch,” Rhein said. “He is just a little sawed-off bitch. I worked for him. I mean I worked for him. He had me shock waving horses. He would leave me these notes. They were hidden in his drawer and then we used to use Decadurabalin [Deca-Durabolin, a trade name for anabolic steroid nandrolone]. I used to use Winstrol [a steroid] and he was like 'Don't you dare put that on the bill.”
“Wow,” Servis said.”I'm like … you know … so this guy, he talks out of both sides of his mouth,” Rhein said.

“Yeah he does and one day somebody is going to write a fucking book,” Servis responded. “It is going to be a groom or a vet somebody and he is going to hang them all out.”

“Yeah, believe me we could,” said Rhein. “I was there. I mean, I know these hypocrites. I mean I did all these guys work. I know who was using and who was not, who needed to, who didn't, I mean. I don't say it lightly, but shit. I was doing [several other individuals — not named in the document], I had all those barns. I was doing all their lameness. And these guys were the first ones that wanted you to do it, 'hey what can we do?' … Like I said, it is never on a bill. It is never on a bill. That is the problem.”

(We don't know who he's referring to, either. Remember, tips can be emailed to us at Ask Ray.)
Rhein was also giving off-label bisphosphonates. An intercepted call between Chan and Servis on June 17, 2019 discussed Rhein's use of Tildren — an FDA-approved bisphosphonate labeled for use in horses four years old and up. Chan said Rhein had been giving the drug to 2-year-olds “at like half dose.” Chan also told Servis (incorrectly) that the drug was cleared for horses three years old and up. Further, he incorrectly said “it's one of those things that's easy to test for but it's just they can't mark it property so they don't really know when you gave it. But you know now that they have the rule that it should be four and up and you really have no excuse if they found it in your 2-year-old. You know what I mean, but if like it was a 4-year-old then you could be like, 'Oh man it got it sometime before I got the horse' or something like that.” Read more about bisphosphonates here.
Prosecutors say wire taps were the only way to uncover much of this evidence, because the defendants were careful. In addition to coordinating with each other to anticipate and evade barn searches and out-of-competition testing, the wire taps reveal that the defendants were cautious about who they offered their services to. FBI agents did not believe they could successfully plant an undercover agent in any of the trainers' or veterinarians' businesses to surveil them, and pointed out that monitoring outside barns, even using pole cameras and other hidden recording devices, would be more likely to be spotted than they would be to capture evidence of a horse being injected. Even if they did get video of an injection, it would not be enough to show what the substance was and whether it was adulterated. Besides those logistical challenges, conversations between Fishman and Giannelli made reference to whether unnamed potential clients could “be trusted,” suggesting that they were unwilling to do business with someone they thought may inform to officials on their program, or who may administer drugs in a way that would get them caught. One informant lost connection with Surick after rumors surfaced in October 2018 that the informant (also unnamed) had begun cooperating with law enforcement. Read more about the difficulties of investigating illegal drugs in racing in this commentary from the Paulick Report.
Seth Fishman's operation was extensive and complex. While much of the focus on Medivet Equine seems to be its SGF-1000 and TB-1000 products, Seth Fishman's catalogue was much larger. In a phone call between Navarro and Seth Fishman, Navarro asked Fishman for “that amino acid injectable shit that you sent me” which prompted Fishman to later ask for more specificity, as he said he had “hundreds of products.” Fishman also said he created customized programs, and sometimes even customized substances, for each trainer client he had. His theory was that if one trainer were caught, regulatory authorities would immediately begin looking for the drug or drugs used by that person. Fishman believed he had a better chance at remaining in business if each substance combination was unique enough that the discovery of one wouldn't necessarily reveal others. Fishman told potential customers the benefits of using a non-commercially available (non-FDA approved) drug were that many were untestable. “Unless somebody turns you in to the race jurisdiction, no one is going to test for it because it's not known until it is known,” he said.
Some defendants could not remember the names of the drugs they were using and did not seem to know what was in them. At various times, Navarro referred to SGF as HGF. Servis referred to Maximum Security having received the “KS” and was later corrected by Rhein to say it was “the SG.” Rhein, who was distributing SGF-1000, had a lot to say about how SGF-1000 could not appear in post-race tests, and if anything, would show up as collagen or maybe dexamethasone. (Note: we ran this 'SGF as dexamethasone' theory by testing experts, and they were clear it was virtually impossible for one drug to be confused with another in post-race testing.)But although Rhein said the substance would not test positive for any “growth factors,” he did not seem to understand whether SGF-1000 contained “growth hormone.” In one conversation with Servis, Rhein said, “So, but…between you and me, because [of] the testing, they called me from the test center here and I was like, 'What's up?' They go, 'Do you know anything?' So what they called it, they called it 'growth hormone.' They were like 'You're using some sheep growth hormone.' I go, 'No, it has no growth hormone whatsoever in it.' And I said, 'It tested as collagen, which is a protein. A fine…there is nothing wrong with it.' I told him the name of the gentleman that [had tested] it in California. I said 'His name is [redacted].' He goes, 'Oh, I know him.' I said, 'The Jockey Club had it tested. They were all freaked out, they thought it w'And he said, 'Listen, somebody dropped a dime on me.' And I was like, 'What?' They are like, 'Yeah.' So all we need to do…I'm not going to say anything to anything else. I'm just going to tell [co-defendant veterinarian] Alex [Chan] and people like that. Like it is not on any of our bills. It never is.”
In a separate conversation with co-defendant Michael Kegley Jr., who has entered a guilty plea, Rhein said, “Make sure there is no growth hormone in there because if they are calling it that, and it is in there then we'll — we need to — but I can't imagine there is. There's no — I can't — I don't think a fetus [i.e., the source of the purported sheep placenta from which SGF-1000 is derived] has growth hormone in it. There's just — I don't — I don't think fetal placenta membranes have growth hormones. You know, I'll do some research tonight but I don't believe that's correct.

“I think it could have something that stimulates it … Well here's the thing is, I don't think it does. And just because they can test for it, doesn't mean they will. Now if it has growth hormone, I mean, it costs them a lot of money to test. A lot of money. And then the second thing is, how long is something in there. Well if we're giving it five to seven days out then we're fine. It's not gonna hang around. It's — nothing hangs around long. EPO doesn't hang around that long.”
When MediVet Equine did find out what was in SGF-1000, they hid it. Exhibit documents revealed a letter sent by the makers of SGF-1000 to the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium in September 2019, complaining that their product should not be called out by the organization as “illegal.” MediVet Equine provided a copy of test results from a test it ordered via Industrial Labs, showing that the substance was negative for IGF-1 and Follistatin. What MediVet Equine didn't tell RMTC was that the testing on SGF-1000 had come back positive for acepromazine, leavamisole, detomidine, pyrilamine, lidocaine, MEGX, xylazine, and caffeine. No further explanation is revealed in the document as to why those substances were present in the sample.
Defendants seem to have a lot of information — or at least, they believe they have a lot of information — about drug testing. When consulted by a panicking Surick about attempts at out-of-competition testing for Northern Virgin, Navarro assured Surick that the “real EPO” (as opposed to “generic EPO” also referenced by the two men) would be testable for three days. At four days, regulators would “see a cloud but they don't know what the fuck it is … Now five days, you are good. Now with the one here, they can't find anything.” Fishman also boasted that one of his products, a blood builder, had been given to a horse in New Jersey who was out-of-competition tested 12 hours later. The test sample was sent to a laboratory in Hong Kong, and the test came back negative. Rhein also revealed he had some contact with testing officials.”I mean, I know because I met the guy inadvertently when The Jockey Club took a box of the SGF,” he told Servis. “They took it and I met the guy, and I met the guy down at the conference, and he goes, 'The Jockey Club.' And he saw the hat that I had on was the same [equine pharmaceutical] company, and he goes, 'Oh, man I just tested a box of that stuff.' And I go, 'What stuff?' And he goes 'MediVet. You've got a hat on—SGF. Yeah, Jockey Club sent it to me out in California. Yeah, it came back as just a bunch of collagen. Nothing interesting [unintelligible]. These guys think it's got something that can be like a PED.” He goes, 'There's nothing in it.' And he was the actual head of the testing lab.”
We got a few more details about the drugging of Maximum Security. Servis' barn was the subject of at least two out-of-competition testing rounds in June 2019. on June 5, samples were pulled from Maximum Security, and test samples were pulled from other horses on June 3. Servis and assistant Henry Argueta (who was named on the original indictment but absent from the November 2020 superseding indictment) speculated that the commission may have been looking for clenbuterol administration outside of a prescription. Servis then called Rhein on June 5, seeming to seek reassurance that the out-of-competition test would be negative.
Servis: Hey. So they've been doing some out-of-competition testing, which I have no problem with. Um, they took Maximum Security Monday and they came back again today. But Monday he got the KS. I just want to make sure we are all good with that.Rhein: Wait, what did he get?Servis: I'm sorry, I said “KS.” The, you know, your shot. The…
Rhein: Oh, the SG.

Servis: Yeah, that stuff.

Rhein: Yeah—no, no, no. The Jockey Club tested it, and I met the guy who tested it way back when. It comes back as collagen. They don't even have a test for it.

Servis: It will probably come up with [dexamethasone] probably, right?

Rhein: Yeah, that's it. It will be dex. It will be dex. It will be like—that's it. And I've had them, I had them pull some stuff, and I was like, “Oh, [expletive], I wonder what will happen?” Nothing. Nothing. I mean and the guy said SGF doesn't even test close, thank god. But the only thing will be the AZM and you can just say he
was like hives or something, but…

Servis: Right. But they're not even going to ask me about it.

Rhein: They won't, even.

Servis: Because you're allowed to have that anyways. Dex, I mean.

Rhein: He's allowed. He's allowed. So [unintelligible] I don't know. I've done it. I've had it tested. Jockey Club did it, and I've had at least three different times it's been tested on horses that I gave it the day before and nothing. Not a word.

Servis: Yup.

Rhein: There's no test for it in America. There's no testing. There's nothing.

Servis: Okay, that's fine.

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