Mangini Pleads Guilty in Doping Case

Scott Mangini, who, along with Jason Servis,  Jorge Navarro and others was indicted in March 2020 for his involvement in a horse doping scheme, has pled guilty to conspiring to unlawfully distribute adulterated and misbranded drugs with the intent to defraud and mislead, it was announced Friday by Audrey Strauss, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He faces a maximum sentence of five years.

Mangini, 55, became the third person involved with the case to enter a guilty plea. The list includes Mangini's business partner, Scott Robinson. It is unknown whether or not Mangini and Robinson are cooperating with authorities and providing them with lists of additional clients who were not named in the original indictments.

Mangini will be sentenced Sept. 10 by Judge Paul Oetken. Robinson was sentenced to 18 months for his role in the scheme to use performance-enhancing drugs on horses. He also had to forfeit $3.8 million.

Mangini used several websites, among them “horseprerace.com” and “racehorsemeds.com,” to sell drugs, including illegal medications he called “Blast Off Red Blood Builder,” “Extreme Explosion,” “Oral Epo,” and “Green Speed.”

“Scott Mangini created and flooded the supply side of a market of greed that continues to endanger racehorses through the sale of performance-enhancing drugs,” Strauss said in a statement. “Mangini designed and created dozens of products intended for use by those engaged in fraud and animal abuse.  His products were manufactured with no oversight of their composition, in shoddy facilities, despite prior efforts by state and federal regulators to shut down Mangini's operation and strip his license. Mangini's guilty plea underscores that our Office and our partners at the FBI are committed to the prosecution and investigation of corruption, fraud, and endangerment in the horse racing industry.”

The government contends that from as early as 2011 through the March 2020 indictments, Mangini manufactured, sold and shipped millions of dollars worth of adulterated and misbranded equine performance-enhancing drugs. Mangini is a former pharmacist whose license was suspended in 2016.

Many of the drugs sold by Mangini fell under the category of “blood builders,” which were used by trainers to increase red blood cell counts and improve a horse's endurance. Other drugs were used to deaden a horse's nerves and block pain in order to improve a horse's race performance. In addition, Mangini told his clients that no tests were available for the drugs he was selling. For example, Mangini's pain-numbing product “Numb It Injection” was advertised as a “proprietary formula and without question the most powerful pain shot in the market today” and as something that could not be found through post or pre-race tests.

According to the U.S. Attorney's office, Mangini was selling drugs that were manufactured in non-Food and Drug Administration registered facilities and they carried significant risks to the animals affected through the administration of those drugs.

Mangini operated out of Boca Raton, Florida.

Sarah Izhaki, also a drug distributer, has also pled guilty but has yet to be sentenced.

This case is being handled by the Office's Money Laundering and Transnational Criminal Enterprises Unit.  Assistant United States Attorneys Sarah Mortazavi, Anden Chow, Benet Kearney, and Andrew C. Adams are in charge of the prosecution.

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Owner Of Illegal Racehorse Doping Websites Scott Mangini Pleads Guilty In Federal Court

Audrey Strauss, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Scott Mangini pled guilty today to conspiring to unlawfully distribute adulterated and misbranded drugs with the intent to defraud and mislead, in connection with the charges filed in United States v. Robinson et al., 20 Cr. 162 (JPO). Mangini pled guilty before U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken, and will be sentenced on September 10, 2021, before Judge Oetken.

U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: “Scott Mangini created and flooded the supply side of a market of greed that continues to endanger racehorses through the sale of performance-enhancing drugs. Mangini designed and created dozens of products intended for use by those engaged in fraud and animal abuse. His products were manufactured with no oversight of their composition, in shoddy facilities, despite prior efforts by state and federal regulators to shut down Mangini's operation and strip his license. Mangini's guilty plea underscores that our Office and our partners at the FBI are committed to the prosecution and investigation of corruption, fraud, and endangerment in the horse racing industry.”

According to the prior Indictments, the Superseding Information to which Mangini pled guilty, and other court documents, as well as statements made in public court proceedings:

From at least in or about 2011 through at least in or about March 2020, Mangini and his conspirators manufactured, sold, and shipped millions of dollars' worth of adulterated and misbranded equine drugs, including performance-enhancing drugs (“PEDs”) intended to be administered to racehorses for the purpose of improving those horses' race performance in order to win races and obtain prize money. Mangini, a former pharmacist whose license was suspended in 2016, sold these drugs through several direct-to-consumer websites designed to appeal to racehorse trainers and owners, including, among others, “horseprerace.com” and “racehorsemeds.com.”

Mangini contributed to the conspiracy by, among other things, using his training to design and create custom PEDs that were advertised and sold online, using misleading labels, packaging, and return address information, including sales to customers in the Southern District of New York. Among the drugs advertised and sold during the course of the conspiracy were “blood builders,” which are used by racehorse trainers and others to increase red blood cell counts and/or the oxygenation of muscle tissue of a racehorse in order to stimulate the horse's endurance, which enhances that horse's performance in, and recovery from, a race, as well as customized analgesics that are used by racehorse trainers and others to deaden a horse's nerves and block pain in order to improve a horse's race performance. Mangini and his co-conspirators repeatedly touted illegal drugs sold on these websites as substances that “WILL NOT TEST” in the event of drug screens by racing officials. For example, Mangini's pain-numbing product “Numb It Injection” was advertised as a “proprietary formula and without question the most powerful pain shot in the market today AND WILL NOT TEST,” and customers were expressly directed to administer the drug by “injection as close to the event or extreme exercise as possible.”

The drugs distributed through the defendant's websites were manufactured in non-Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) -registered facilities and carried significant risks to the animals affected through the administration of those illicit PEDs. For example, in 2016, Mangini and his co-conspirator, Scott Robinson, who was previously convicted and sentenced in this case, received a complaint regarding the effect of his unregulated drugs on a customer's horse: “starting bout 8 hours after I give the injection and for about 36 hours afterwards both my horses act like they are heavily sedated, can barely walk. Could I have a bad bottle of medicine, I'm afraid to give it anymore since this has happened three times.”

Commenting on this complaint to Mangini, Robinson wrote simply, “here is another one.”

Mangini is among 29 individuals charged to date in a series of Indictments arising from an investigation of a widespread scheme by racehorse trainers, veterinarians, PED distributors, and others to manufacture, distribute, and receive adulterated and misbranded PEDs and to secretly administer those PEDs to racehorses competing at all levels of professional horseracing. By evading PED prohibitions and deceiving regulators, horse racing officials, and the FDA, among others, participants in these schemes sought to improve race performance and obtain prize money from racetracks, all to the detriment and risk of the health and well-being of the racehorses.

Mangini, 55, of Boca Raton, Florida, pled guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the federal drug misbranding and adulteration laws. This offense carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The maximum potential sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the judge.

Ms. Strauss praised the outstanding investigative work of the New York FBI Office's Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force and its support of the FBI's Integrity in Sports and Gaming Initiative. Ms. Strauss also thanked the New Jersey Attorney General's Office, the New York State Police, and the New York City Police Department for their support of this investigation, and the FDA and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for their assistance and expertise.

This case is being handled by the Office's Money Laundering and Transnational Criminal Enterprises Unit. Assistant United States Attorneys Sarah Mortazavi, Anden Chow, Benet Kearney, and Andrew C. Adams are in charge of the prosecution.

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Voss: ‘I Love Horses’ Only Takes You So Far

I think it's fair to say that most people in the racing industry were disgusted when they read the federal indictments last March of 27 people, including trainers, veterinarians, and drug makers. The very first person from that group of 27 was sentenced this week to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding.

I've reported on companies affiliated with Scott Robinson for several years now, and I had reason to suspect the conditions under which he and his co-conspirator Scott Mangini made illegal drugs were poor. Even I was surprised at some of the details in court documents filed around his sentencing, and I don't think I've been so horrified by a legal document since the original indictments.

The pre-sentencing report filed by the prosecution is littered with strong language about Robinson's involvement in peddling products designed to act as performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) or as substitutes for more expensive prescriptions. Possibly the most upsetting part of the document, which you can read here, was intercepted messages between Robinson and Mangini describing issues Robinson was seeing with products headed off for sale. Robinson describes “blood building peptide has black particles” floating in it, and a bug floating in a bottle which was “crimped,” suggesting it was a bottle of injectable product. Despite these quality concerns, Robinson kept selling the stuff, and presumably, his customers kept injecting it.

In case you wondered, as I did, what happens when you inject a product that's contaminated with bugs and other solids into a horse's muscle or vein, safe to say it's not a pretty picture. Solid particles would travel with an injected substance through a horse's veins, through the heart's atrium and ventricles, and via the aorta to the body. The vessels and capillaries it would travel through on its journey get gradually smaller, some as small as six to eight microns. The smallest particles visible to the naked eye are around 40 microns, so anything of that size will likely be stuck somewhere. In humans, the trapping of a solid particle somewhere in the circulatory system is known to cause anaphylactic shock, pulmonary embolisms, heart attacks, vein irritation, and death. If a horse in this situation is very unlucky, tissues would slowly die as they become unable to receive proper blood flow and oxygen. It's a painful experience for the animal.

According to one testing expert I spoke with, the reaction could be instant or it could take enough time that someone may not connect the horse's death to the injection it received. That likely means we won't know how many horses may have been sickened or killed by the products Robinson peddled.

Robinson's attorneys, of course, did their best to minimize the amount of time he would spend in prison after entering his guilty plea. That's their job. Prosecutors were pushing for the maximum sentence of 60 months, and defense counsel asked for 0 months. The judge landed on 18 months, which Robinson will begin serving later this year. One of the arguments made in support of Robinson grossed me out even more than his dismissive responses to concerns about the safety of his products – his attorneys suggested the judge should go easy on him, in part, because of how much he loves horses.

The defense pre-sentencing report, which you can read here, summarized character references provided by friends and family of Robinson. More than one discussed Robinson's disdain for mistreatment of animals, particularly racehorses.

“From my three years of work with Mr. Robinson, I have become aware of his great knowledge of and love for racehorses,” wrote his psychiatrist, Dr. Ronald E. DeMao. “Horses and horse racing have literally 'been his life.' It is inconceivable to me that he would ever do anything to intentionally harm a horse. In fact, he has developed products to aid in the physical health and rehabilitation of horses. I have heard him speak in very pejorative terms about others who 'dope' or harshly train racehorses.”

Writing of his “genuine concern for the way some horses are treated,” regenerative medicine physician Dr. Michael Heim said: “A story that has always struck me in a powerful way is Scott's description of a practice in horse racing called bleaching which, to the best of my knowledge, is when a horse is injected intravenously with bleach in order to improve physical performance for a short time but at an obvious cost to the horse's health. Scott has described to me how he has been able to spot such horses in a deteriorated state, purchase them, and subsequently nurse them back to health. As an animal lover, I find any practice such as bleaching to be detestable and applaud Scott's efforts to help even a single horse regain health.”

I'm left wondering whether, in his concern for racehorse welfare, Robinson ever reported to a racing commission, law enforcement, or the FDA people he thought were injecting bleach into horses. Or did he think that might be a bit hypocritical?

I don't find the notion of sentimentality over horses very compelling when it's coming from someone pleading guilty to the acts described here, or in the federal indictment. “I love horses,” will not save you if you have a hand in hurting them.

The prosecution evidently didn't find this part of Robinson's argument compelling, either.

“The claim in one such letter that Robinson “spoke in very pejorative terms about others who 'dope' racehorses contradicts the slate of products Robinson offered for sale … Far from decrying 'dopers,' Robinson catered to them through his various ventures, and reaped millions of dollars in sales from these businesses.”

But let's broaden that conclusion, shall we?

When much of the world reacted with outrage to the now-infamous photo of trainer Gordon Elliott grinning astride a dead horse in Ireland, the response from many in the racing industry was to talk about how much they love horses – or in a few cases, how much Elliott loves them. How many times have we seen this response? Horses die at Santa Anita, and well-intentioned people in racing post photos of themselves snuggling foals with the naïve belief that this will absolve whatever sin is in the headlines this month. A series of drug positives from a prominent trainer makes headlines; a racehorse winds up in the kill pen after struggling home last; a jockey is caught with a buzzer – we love our horses, all of us love them, these are just a few bad apples. 'Feel sorry for us!' they cry, 'People think we're mean, just because animals are dead.'

Anyone in public relations or in professional sports knows that the best defense is a good offense. By the time you're reacting to another welfare embarrassment, you've already lost, and that's because repeated protestations of love start to sound hollow when there keep being reasons to renew them.

It's not exactly the same, of course. The sport as a whole is made up of many individuals of different mindsets and levels of feeling for their horses, while the defendant here is one man. But it's worth remembering: when we speak to the outside world, much like a school of fish, the world sees one body, and it's going to judge us by what they see us do, not how we say we feel.

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Robinson, Defendant In Federal Doping Indictment, Sentenced To 18 Months In Prison

Scott Robinson, one of the defendants in the federal case that rocked horse racing in March 2020, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. The Thoroughbred Daily News reported that U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken handed down the sentence on Tuesday after Robinson pleaded guilty to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding conspiracy in September 2020.

Robinson, together with pharmacist Scott Mangini, was accused of operating consumer-facing websites such as HorsePreRace, peddling products which purported to be blood builders and pain blockers which were allegedly untestable, as well as discounted versions of prescription drugs despite not being an FDA-approved manufacturer. Robinson is neither a veterinarian nor a pharmacist.

Click here to read the Paulick Report's investigation of HorsePreRace from 2016.

A pre-sentencing report filed by federal prosecutors ahead of Oetken's ruling revealed even more disturbing details about the conditions in which those products were made. A state pharmacy board inspection report dated February 2016 which was published by the Paulick Report had picked up on unsanitary conditions at co-conspirator Scott Mangini's facility in Florida: the Florida Department of Health Records noted that there was no working sink in the pharmacy for hand washing, and employees were instead using a ten-gallon bucket. The department noted so much dust on the counters where prescriptions were made that an investigator was able to trace letters in the dirt with an alcohol swab — a particular problem since some products were injectables. Ingredients were mislabeled.

Click here to read more about Mangini's facility from this 2016 investigative feature by the Paulick Report.

Even before that inspection however, the report cited communications from Robinson to Mangini indicating he knew something could be wrong with the products he was selling. In spring 2015, Robinson began asking Mangini whether there had been changes to manufacturing processes.

“R u making stuff different? I have a lot of stuff that doesn't look same and has stuff floating in it. Blood building peptide has black particles,” one message to Mangini read.

“[Employee] has been complaining of bugs coming out of boxes u send. I told him he was crazy until I found one floating in bottle today when labeling,” read another, also to Mangini.

The Board of Pharmacy conducted its inspection in December 2015, but Robinson was dismissive of any danger resulting from the inspection, writing to Mangini, “And board of pharmacy worries about u? They got bigger problems! Lol.”

(Mangini, who has been charged with two counts of drug adulteration and misbranding, has entered a not guilty plea and his case is ongoing.)

Between December 2015 and January 2016, Robinson fielded complaints from trainers who had injected Pentosan into their horses, only to see the horses become severely depressed and unable to move. The horses' veterinarian attributed the reactions to a bad batch. The pre-sentencing report indicated Robinson “was dismissive of these complaints.”

When federal agents executed search warrants on premises used by Robinson in September 2019, prosecutors say he became incensed and “attempted to extort the federal agents involved in the seizure by threatening to release a letter to certain members of the racehorse industry informing them of of the existence and scope of the FBI's investigation if the FBI did not immediately return his electronic devices the same day they were seized. After being informed his threat was itself a crime, Robinson retracted his threat hours later.”

After he became aware the FBI was investigating him, prosecutors say Robinson continued distributing adulterated and misbranded drugs, generating “millions of dollars in revenue.”

Prosecutors had requested the maximum available sentence of five years in prison, while Robinson's defense team, pointing out his lack of prior criminal convictions, suggested he serve no time. Defense attorneys painted a picture of a man who had risen to business success from near-homelessness and who battled depression and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) due to injuries sustained in the United States Navy. Letters from friends and family framed Robinson as a caring person who gave liberally to charity and financially supported family members.

Although Robinson had no criminal history, prosecutors did note that he was court martialed in 1998 and dishonorably discharged from the Navy after he admitted to reselling anabolic steroids to other enlisted members of the Navy.

One character reference letter in support of Robinson's defense came from New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program, where executive director Dot Morgan wrote that Robinson “donated a massive amount of his compounded omeprazole ulcer treatment” to the program in 2010 and 2011. In 2014, HorsePreRace and HorseGold (of which Robinson was president) were the recipients of warning letters from the Food and Drug Administration warning them to stop marketing omeprazole and other products designed to act as prescription drugs because they were not approved as mass manufacturers of drugs.

Another letter, from Robinson's psychiatrist, highlighted the defendant's feelings for horses.

“From my three years of work with Mr. Robinson, I have become aware of his great knowledge of and love for racehorses,” wrote Dr. Ronald E. DeMao. “Horses and horse racing have literally “been his life.” It is inconceivable to me that he would ever do anything to intentionally harm a horse. In fact, he has developed products to aid in the physical health and rehabilitation of horses. I have heard him speak in very pejorative terms about others who 'dope' or harshly train racehorses.”

Robinson is required to surrender himself on Sept. 7, 2021 to begin his sentence. He will have another three years of supervised release after serving his time.

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