Cohen: Harness Racing Is Trying To Ignore Biggest Scandal (Yet) Of The Year

If you see something, say something,” unless it's embarrassing and maybe criminal. 

The biggest story in horse racing last week was the federal conviction of Dr. Seth Fishman after a horse-doping trial that ought to strike fear in the hearts of the racing communities across the world. Seemingly caught red-handed, with his lawyer lamely trying to portray him as a paragon of virtue, Fishman almost certainly is going to prison. It's even more certain that his customer database, in the hands of federal lawyers or investigators and now made public, threatens to turn a really bad scandal about the prevalence of doping into an existential crisis for both Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing.

The second biggest story of the week, at least as far as harness racing goes, was the industry's lack of alarm about Ross Cohen's testimony in Fishman's trial. Cohen was a harness trainer of little note until he pleaded guilty and then helped the feds incriminate Fishman. As part of his plea deal, Cohen told prosecutors and the jury that he fixed harness races at Yonkers Raceway, in New York, one of the most historic and important tracks in the country. Cohen made the allegations under oath and penalty of perjury and it's hard to imagine that federal prosecutors don't have a reasonable belief that he is telling the truth.

The third biggest story of the week, in harness racing, was the decision by Jeff Gural, owner and operator of the New Meadowlands Racetrack (and, full disclosure, a partner of mine in several horses) to allow trainer Adrienne Hall to race horses at the track despite her damning testimony against Fishman. Hall says she bought the illegal drugs Fishman was peddling and used them on a horse, who did so well doped up Hall felt compelled to thank Fishman for the juice. “He dominated. He was a completely different animal. I was so happy,” Hall reportedly told Fishman. Like Cohen, Hall copped a plea. Unlike Cohen, Hall is getting another chance.

And, finally, came publication of the Thoroughbred Daily News' interview with Scott Robinson, now serving time in a federal penitentiary in Florida for selling and distributing misbranded and adulterated drugs. “I sold to everybody,” Robinson now says. “More people should be indicted. Definitely.” But he adds that the feds (and presumably state racing commissions) have not pressed him to divulge the names on his customer list and he isn't inclined to do so. He told Bill Finley at TDN without an apparent shred of irony: “I know my career is over, but there are people out there who still work in racing and their livelihoods are at stake.”

These are stories about cheating and doping and bad medicine that are vitally important today and likely to be important for years to come. They raise questions and concerns of racing integrity at a time when the future of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act hangs in the balance. A federal judge is likely to rule soon on a request for an injunction against the federal legislation, a challenge brought by a few rogue horsemen's associations, including the United States Trotting Association, the increasingly-divisive trade group that wants to scuttle HISA even though harness racing is not covered by the limbo-ed new law.

There are, thankfully, still enough independent media voices within the world of Thoroughbred racing (including The Paulick Report, of course) to cover these stories and to shed light on the problems the industry faces. The same cannot be said of coverage of harness racing. There are only a few outlets that offer anything resembling independent news coverage and virtually none of that coverage is investigative. Some of this is a matter of practicality. There simply aren't enough legitimate journalists who are both interested in and capable of covering the sport. And some of it is a matter of policy. Few want to pay someone to ask tough questions.

So we get what we've gotten over the past few weeks. Belated pool coverage of Fishman's doping trial (coverage which, I should say, was good) and virtually no public mention of Ross Cohen's role in the case. “I paid drivers for somebody to hold their horses back in races,” Cohen reportedly testified. Which drivers? He was not asked and did not say. The New York track is owned by MGM Resorts and presided over, at least from the horseman's perspective, by Joe Faraldo, who is both the president of the Standardbred Owners Association of New York and chairman of the United States Trotting Association.

Faraldo, you might recall, was linked as an owner at some point with one of the trainers later indicted by the feds. Was Faraldo on a witness list for the Fishman trial? Is he on a witness list for related trials? Has he been approached by federal investigators or defense attorneys to share what he knows about the operation of Yonkers as it relates to the conduct of Fishman and Cohen? We don't know. Is Yonkers or the New York racing commission or Faraldo's horseman's organization investigating the recent allegations? We don't know. Has the USTA ever looked into whether Faraldo's dual roles create conflicts of interest? We don't know.

Brad Maione, a spokesman for the New York State Gaming Commission, was particularly unhelpful. He told me recently: “We cannot confirm or deny whether an investigation is being conducted.” When I asked whether any New York racing licenses had been suspended or revoked as a result of the federal case he responded: “We cannot confirm or deny whether an investigation is being conducted.” When I asked if state regulators were cooperating or had cooperated with the feds during the course of the investigation, he responded: “The commission regularly collaborates with state, federal and local enforcement.”

We certainly can't go to the USTA's website for answers. The USTA is quite capable of promoting stories it wants to share with its readership. Its propaganda campaign against the HISA shows there is plenty of room on that main page for stories about racing integrity. But the Fishman trial? The USTA put up the pool piece after Fishman was convicted. Cohen's allegations against Yonkers drivers? I still have not seen a word of it on the USTA's site. Maybe that's because Faraldo, speaking on behalf of the USTA, keeps embarrassing himself in national publications when given the opportunity to denounce the Fishmans of the world.

The USTA's laughable pro-integrity campaign is based around the bumper-sticker line: “If you see something, say something.” Well, Ross Cohen saw something. And Ross Cohen said something. He said he was part of something illegal at Yonkers. He said it under oath. What's the USTA going to do about that, apart from ignoring that news on its website? Who is going to call for an independent investigation into racing at Yonkers Raceway? The USTA and Hanover Shoe Farms, the sport's largest breeding operation, established a $250,000 matching fund grant in 2020 to “support the work of restoring full integrity of that sport.” Is some of that money going to go into investigating Cohen's allegations? If not, why not?

I asked a USTA director some of these questions last week and the responses I got help explain the ways in which the organization is much closer to being part of the problem than being part of the solution. “In general the USTA does not do investigations,” I was told when I asked about the Cohen case. “We are not a news reporting organization in this manner,” I was told when I asked about reporting Cohen's allegations. Conflicts of interest? “If an issue would become too close to a Director he/she would likely remove themselves from the issue in question,” I was told, a fiduciary standard that I suspect doesn't cut it on Wall Street.

If I were an honest driver at Yonkers I would want my name cleared from the allegations Cohen leveled at the trial. If I were an honest trainer at Yonkers I would want to know more about what Cohen says he did and how he says he did it. As an owner of horses who race at Yonkers I want to know more about the race-fixing schemes. If I were a bettor, I wouldn't bet a dollar more there until I know the scheme that Cohen described ended when he was caught. None of this should be controversial. Either the USTA, New York regulators, and the SBOANY are as dedicated to protecting honest horsemen and horsewomen as they say or they are not. We all are better off knowing the answer to that question sooner rather than later.

Andrew Cohen is a Standardbred owner and breeder and a two-time winner of both the John Hervey Award and the O'Brien Award for commentary on horse racing.

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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.”

The post Convicted Drug Distributor Robinson: “I Sold to Everybody” appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Mangini Sentenced To 18 Months In Federal Prison For Role In Drug Misbranding Case

Former pharmacist Scott Mangini, who helped develop the products sold on RacehorseMeds and HorsePreRace, was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison on Sept. 10. U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken also ruled that Mangini would be on supervised release for three years after he completes his prison sentence.

Judge Oetken originally determined that Mangini would surrender himself to begin his sentence in October, but upon request from his attorney to let him spend the holidays with his family, moved his surrender date to January.

Mangini pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to unlawfully distribute adulterated and misbranded drugs with the intent to defraud and mislead. His prison sentence is the same as that of Scott Robinson, his co-conspirator who was sentenced in March 2021.

The indictments of Mangini and Robinson were made public at the same time as those against a number of prominent trainers, assistants, and veterinarians in the racing industry, all of whom prosecutors say were involved in the sale, distribution and use of illegal drugs to enhance the performance of racehorses.

Mangini's attorneys had requested a sentence of six months' home confinement, while prosecutors requested the maximum allowable sentence for the offense of 60 months in prison.

“I find the fact of imprisonment is more important than the length of the imprisonment,” said Oetken in rendering his decision. He cited his legal obligations to impose a sentence that would serve as an effective deterrent to others while not being harsher than necessary to do so.

Both men were ordered to forfeit over $8 million, which investigators say is the value of the illegal products that the two sold during the time in question. Attorneys revealed that in 20 months, sales records from RacehorseMeds indicated there were over 27,600 sales made by the company. The government is in possession of some sales records, but those have not been made publicly available.

Read more about new details of the case as revealed in sentencing documents filed in recent days in this story from Sept. 9.

There was considerable debate between attorneys before the sentencing about the characterization of Mangini's behavior in the pre-sentencing reports which will remain on his record. Mangini's counsel maintained that the majority of sales through his companies were for illegally compounded, “knock-off” versions of therapeutic prescription drugs and while not approved or appropriately prescribed, this made it unfair to call his behavior abusive towards animals. Prosecutors pointed to injectable products formulated by Mangini with names like Blast Off Red and Blast Off Extreme, which were advertised to behave as mimetics for epogen and other performance-enhancing drugs.

Mangini's attorneys said that most of those products did not behave as performance-enhancers and were instead dietary supplements because they did not have the same effects as the products they claimed to mimic. Oetken questioned whether this amounted to fraud on the part of the people marketing the drugs, which seemed problematic also. Ultimately though, he made clear that the nature of the drugs themselves was less important to him than the fact they were misbranded.

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“The performance-enhancing aspect of the case is not really, I think, relevant to sentencing. It may be relevant to press releases and reputations and things like that. You made a good point that it may not be most of what's been sold on these website, but the fact is there were still problems. It was a shoddily-run pharmacy,” said Oetken, describing the problems Mangini's facility had with safety and sterility, as well as his efforts to conceal his association with the websites. “All of that is related to the effort to evade regulation from state and federal authorities and that's what I'm focused on for sentencing.”

An emotional Mangini spoke during the proceedings, begging Oetken not to send him away from his wife and stepson.

“I thought I could help all kinds of horses and owners and trainers,” said Mangini. “I didn't know it was illegal.

“Now that I look back, I destroyed my life and I have no one to blame but myself. I am living with the consequences of my actions. I've ended my career as a pharmacist and I can't work with horses again…Since my arrest, I've tried to be better. I admitted that I violated the FDA rules. I met with the government every time they wanted and truly told them the truth. I admitted I broke the law. I am filled with regret and remorse. I am sorry.”

The post Mangini Sentenced To 18 Months In Federal Prison For Role In Drug Misbranding Case appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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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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