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‘Of Course, It’s Doping’: Fishman Trials Focuses On Wiretaps, FDA Expert

The jury in the federal horse-doping trial of Seth Fishman on Tuesday, Jan. 25, heard a portion of a Federal Bureau of Investigation wiretap in which the veterinarian discusses whether the drugs he sold to horse trainers involved doping.

On the call with Fishman was an unidentified individual who wants to know more about the drugs.

“But it's not doping, yeah?” that person asks, according to a transcript of the April 5, 2019, intercepted call.

“Of course, it's doping. The question is, is it testable doping?” Fishman responds according to a transcript.

“Ah test,” says the individual.

“No, no, no, what I'm trying to say is, any time you give something to a horse, that's doping,” Fishman responds. “Whether or not they test for it is another story. This is stuff people are using all the time, so no, they're not testing for it. You know, but don't kid yourself. If you're giving something to a horse to make it better and you're not supposed to do that.”

“Yeah sure,” the individual says.

“That's doping,” Fishman says in response. “You know, whether or not it's testable, that's a different story.”

The conversation began with Fishman asking the caller about his plans to purchase more “stuff.”

Fishman then says, “You know, I have people that set world records using stuff, and then their competition uses the same stuff and the horse doesn't even show up to the track.”

The wiretap was played in court on the fifth day of the trial as testimony resumed after a day's interruption. On Jan. 24, Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil declared a mistrial in the case of Fishman co-defendant Lisa Giannelli. Giannelli's attorney tested positive for COVID-19 before court on Monday, warranting the mistrial.

As the day began Tuesday, Vyskocil announced a ruling rejecting a motion for a mistrial by Fishman's attorneys. They moved for a mistrial because of the positive COVID-19 test they believed upset the flow of the trial and because of remarks the attorney for Giannelli made during openings statements last week that they said could prejudice the jury against their client.

That attorney, Louis Fasulo, had described his client as the “proverbial sheep” to Fishman's “sheep master.”

Vyskocil countered that Fishman had not been prejudiced. “Dr. Fishman has received a fair trial so far and will continue to receive a fair trial,” Vyskocil said.

Fishman was one of more than two dozen members of the horse racing community charged in sweeping indictments in March 2020 with conspiring to dope horses at race tracks across the country with illicit performance-enhancing drugs that wouldn't show up in post-race testing. Those charged included top trainers Jason Servis, who awaits trial, and Jorge Navarro, who pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to dope horses and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Fishman is charged with two counts of conspiring to violate drug adulteration and misbranding laws. He faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted.

As part of their case, prosecutors allege Fishman accepted tens of thousands of dollars from Navarro in exchange for untestable drugs.

On Tuesday, prosecutors called Dr. Jean Bowman, veterinary medical officer in the division of surveillance for the FDA, as a government expert witness.

During her testimony, prosecutor Sarah Mortazavi introduced into evidence photos taken on the day of Navarro's arrest in 2020 that showed him in possession at his Florida home of four alleged PEDs that came from Fishman.

Mortazavi drilled down on those drugs, named BB3. The indictment described BB3 as a customized “blood building” PED that when combined with intense physical exertion thicken a horse's blood. A horse doped with BB3 ran the risk of a heart attack, the indictment said.

The photo of BB3 seized by the FBI from the Navarro residence shows only the product's name on the bottle.

Bowman testified that BB3 had not been approved by the FDA and that she could find no studies in an FDA database about BB3 and its effectiveness and safety to horses.

Bowman also told the jury that the label on the BB3 bottle should have contained more information to pass muster with the FDA. She said the label should have contained the name of the prescribing veterinarian, how and when it should be administered, the identity of the manufacturer, and what precautions should be taken before administering it.

The doctor testified that BB3 and the other drugs Fishman sold should only be prescribed after a physical examination of the animal.

Prosecutors contend Fishman never did that before shipping his PEDs to buyers.

At one point during questioning, Mortazavi had Bowman read from an email Fishman sent to Giannelli on Jan. 5, 2019, that contained a list of drugs available from Fishman's South Florida business Equestology.

“BB3: would only let trusted clients have this,” Bowman quoted the email as saying.

Fishman's lawyers Maurice Sercarz and Marc Fernich will have an opportunity to cross-examine the FDA expert when the trial resumes Jan. 26.

The Thoroughbred industry's leading publications are working together to cover this key trial.

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Baffert/NYRA Hearing, Day 2: Social License To Operate, Ethics Of Therapeutic Drugs Debated

The hearing to determine whether the New York Racing Association will be permitted to exclude Hall of Famer trainer Bob Baffert continued through its second day of testimony Jan. 25 with testimony from witnesses on behalf of the racing association.

Tuesday's proceedings were taken up with the remainder of cross-examination of Rick Goodell, an attorney who has represented the New York State Gaming Commission, as well as testimony from Dr. Pierre-Louis Toutain, veterinary pharmacologist, Dr. Camie Heleski, senior lecturer for the University of Kentucky, and Jeffrey Cannizzo, senior director of government affairs for NYRA.

Here are a few of the highlights:

Justice O. Peter Sherwood, who is serving as hearing officer for the proceedings, grew testy at times Tuesday with Baffert's legal team. Cross examination of Goodell resulted in Baffert attorney Clark Brewster asking repeatedly about New York's threshold levels and whether a test under those levels would result in a positive (in New York it might, if the commission has other evidence a medication was given outside of the permitted timeframe). Sherwood also shut down one of Brewster's lines of questioning of Cannizzo, which was focused on the lack of conflict of interest rules for NYRA board members. Brewster seemed focused on the fact that the New York State Gaming Commission does not permit board members or employees to have active ownership interests in racing, while many NYRA board members do. Sherwood reminded Brewster that in his view, previous rulings from U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon have established that NYRA has the legal authority, based on precedence from a 1982 case before the New York State Supreme Court, to rule a trainer off, and that this point is not considered up for debate.

“What I'm saying now, I've told you before,” Sherwood said to Brewster. “I've cited the case Judge Amon cited. I've cited it in written opinions. I've told you that at this hearing but for some reason or another, you're ignoring it.”

Brewster repeatedly thanked Sherwood for putting his feelings about that legal authority into the record.

Toutain was asked to testify to the potential welfare and performance implications of the drugs for which Baffert horses have tested positive since 2019. Toutain resides in France, and is a distance professor for the University of London's Royal Veterinary College.Toutain was asked about phenylbutazone, and whether it's appropriate to use in the course of training horses.

“No,” said Toutain. “The appropriate use is to suppress the pain for horses and not get the horse to compete with an underlying condition. When you treat horses with phenylbutazone, normally you have to stop on the horse.”

Toutain also asserted that the use of bute could increase the risk of injury “because you are masking underlying conditions that can be severe. The purpose of phenylbutazone is to help the horse, not to mask any injuries.”

Toutain agreed that bute, lidocaine, and betamethasone would not enhance a healthy horse's maximum athletic effort, but were instead potentially problematic because of what they could be hiding.

As to corticosteroids like betamethasone, Toutain cited research stating that horses who were treated with corticosteroids had four times greater risk of catastrophic injury, although it was not clear when those administrations occurred in relationship to the injuries or what doses were used. Toutain also pointed out that a finding in blood of a corticosteroid at a low level does not presuppose the origin of the corticosteroid. A low systemic level of the drug could mean it was given intravenously some time before, or it could have emerged as a result of an intra-articular administration. In cases when a corticosteroid is injected into a joint, low levels of the drug will eventually be found circulating in the body but the concentration will always be much higher in the joint that took the injection.

“Just because you detect nothing in the blood does not mean there is nothing in the joint,” he said.

Toutain admitted his field of expertise was pharmacology and not regulation. Although he has been consulted in the construction of regulation for international racing, that is not his primary occupation.
As to lidocaine, Toutain said there is a relatively low threshold for its use because the drug spikes in the blood quickly and dissipates quickly. It likely has maximum effect somewhere in the first hour of an administration, but Toutain said it's often regulated in such a way to prevent administration within 24 hours of a race.
Heleski testified primarily about the social license to operate, a concept that applies to many industries beyond animal sports. Heleski explained that the phrase refers to social or public acceptance which grants permission for an organization to conduct a given activity. This concept has been used in the past to apply to the mining and forestry industries, and has been applied in recent years to equine activities, including horse racing.

Heleski said that in order to tolerate a given equine sport, the public needs to feel the animals are treated appropriately, and that there is accountability and transparency present in the sport. Attorneys for NYRA asked Heleski about the many headlines in mainstream news media which have dogged Baffert in recent years, as well as the Saturday Night Live skit which poked fun at his interview tour after he announced the betamethasone overage for Medina Spirit. These things, she said, could impact the sport's social license to operate.

“Many people will talk about the issue of drugs and medications and they have a big concern,” she said. “They don't necessarily go into the nuance of levels. Most of the time, they feel like if there was a drug or medication noted, it's bad. They put it all under the umbrella of doping.

“If someone is so well known in a certain sport or industry that even the casual racing fan can identify them, they're more likely to make an impact when some news takes place.”

Baffert's attorneys asked Heleski whether it was Baffert's fault that the general public does not grasp the difference between various therapeutic medications. Attorney W. Craig Robertson also questioned the validity of the concept of the social license to operate, since he said it is not an actual, physical license given out by a central authority and seems an amorphous concept.

Heleski pointed to several key problematic areas in racing which she believes detract from the sport's social license to operate — equine deaths, whip use, medication problems, and aftercare. On cross examination, NYRA attorneys pointed out to Heleski that Baffert has had more than 70 horses die in his care since launching his training career.

Following the day's proceedings, a representative of Trident DMG distributed the following statement to media on behalf of Baffert's legal team. According to its website, Trident is a strategic communications, public relations, and crisis management firm. The statement is attributed to Brewster.

“By jumping to false conclusions and ignoring the facts, NYRA is fueling a bandwagon smear campaign against Mr. Baffert for its own private, competitive purposes – an effort that threatens the integrity of the entire industry. Here are five undisputed facts that support why Mr. Baffert's suspension by NYRA should be overturned immediately:

The New York Gaming Commission is the exclusive and only regulatory agency for horse racing oversight in the State of New York. NYRA has no seat at the table for regulating racing.

NYRA's Board is conflicted, comprised of horse owners that directly compete with Mr. Baffert. No wonder they want him banned from New York racing – his horses beat theirs.

The basis for NYRA's attack is to import rulings from other racing venues about the permissible use of medications that are for therapeutic purposes. Not one racing regulatory agency found grounds to suspend or take action against Mr. Baffert for any of the therapeutic medication threshold overages.

Of the top 14 thoroughbred horse trainers in New York State, nearly all have had more medical violations than Mr. Baffert has been accused of and not one has been suspended by NYRA, nor has NYRA even attempted to suspend them. In fact, not one of the allegations against Mr. Baffert relates to a single New York racetrack rule violation, and Mr. Baffert has never had a reported medication positive in the state in his 25-plus years of racing.”

The hearing continues at 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 26. Read our reporting from Day 1 here.

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‘An Important Start’: Pennsylvania Commission Approves 10-Step Action Plan To Improve Equine Safety; Implementation Targeted For March 1

The Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission announced Tuesday a 10-step action plan to improve equine safety and welfare in the state, with March 1, 2022 the targeted implementation date. Thomas Chuckas, director of Thoroughbred Horse Racing for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, revealed the list during the commission's regularly-scheduled meeting.

“This list is a living and breathing list,” Chuckas said. “There are going to be changes obviously, it is not the end-all, be-all. It's a start, but it is an important start.”

The action plan is a result of the late-summer formation of a working group to address equine welfare, as well as examinations of what has worked in other states and the upcoming federal regulations.

The PSRC action plan is as follows:

Tracks will conduct an independent third party analysis of the racetrack two times per year. The first analysis for the Thoroughbred tracks is to be completed within 60 days and submitted to commission.
Increased monitoring and oversight of AM works, employing additional veterinarians to conduct oversight and examination. That will require a reshuffling of some of the vets and putting more vets in place, but the commission believes that what occurs in the morning is important to racing and moving forward.
Require the practicing veterinarians to attest that the horses are in fit, serviceable, and in sound condition and suitable to race.
Trainers must submit a pre-entry form to a racing panel for permission to race. It will require the submission of the most recent 30-day medical reports for the horses. The panel should consist at a minimum of the race secretary, commission vet, steward, and horsemen's representative.
Institute a rule for lower-level conditions or classes: a horse that doesn't finish in top four positions in five consecutive races is deemed non-competitive and not eligible to race in Pennsylvania.
Requiring the practicing veterinarian to conduct an examination within 48 hours of a horse being placed on the vet's list due to lameness. This examination will assist in determining the cause and if diagnostics are warranted. The practicing veterinarian will provide a verbal report to the commission vet.
Intra-articular injections: The initial injection is permitted based on the practicing veterinarian's examination and recommendation. Any additional injections require diagnostics to support further injections. If any injection is a corticosteroid, the horse is placed on the vet's list for 30 days.
Establish stricter criteria for removal from the vet's list, utilizing diagnostics, scanning, and imaging.
Establish a program to install either a pet scan machine or an MRI or the like at the racetrack in effort to detect issues.
Create a fatality database.

Chuckas added that some of 10 action items might be made via commission regulation, while others might be made by individual racetrack policy.

The PSRC also plans to create an integrity hotline which whistleblowers can call to report violations.

“We're not proposing anything that's never been tried before,” said commissioner Thomas Jay Ellis. “These are the best ideas to protect our horses, not some pie in the sky concepts, but things that can actually be done.”

Commissioner Dr. Corinne Sweeney motioned to approve the action plan, and commissioner Thomas Jay Ellis seconded. The motion carried.

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Documents Show Veterinarian’s Untimely Death Panicked Doping Defendants

“The state police called me. They just found his body in the woods.”

“He is dead”

“Yup, I told you. They found his body in the woods and I guess she is going to be … I mean she gave us so many stories. That he was in rehab. He went there. He went there. She had to … they either had to kill him or did he actually get drunk and go out into the woods and dies. Who knows.”

So begins the transcript of a telephone call that's one of the more sensational pieces of evidence divulged thus far in the ongoing federal doping cases. The transcript was attached to a government motion in November as part of the lesser-reported federal case of Louis Grasso, Donato Poliseno, Thomas Guido III, Richard Banca, and Rene Allard. That case is before a different judge than the monster indictment that includes high-profile Thoroughbred trainers Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis. The Servis et al case saw its first set of defendants go to trial last week, with veterinarian and drug maker Dr. Seth Fishman and sales associate Lisa Giannelli in court.

The Grasso case, which involves primarily harness racing connections, is still trading earlier-stage motions.

In response to one of those motions, prosecutors filed a series of legal arguments, and in one of them, felt the need to clarify the role of defendant Donato Poliseno in the alleged doping scheme. Poliseno, the prosecutors claim, was an animal drug dealer who created and distributed performance-enhancing substances for racehorses outside the regulation of the Food and Drug Administration. Attached to the prosecution's motion was a batch of transcripts from intercepted phone calls between Poliseno and co-defendant Louis Grasso.

Grasso, while trained as a veterinarian, was not (according to the government) actively practicing, but rather focused on drug distribution and compounding.

The disclosed transcripts are all from phone calls between Poliseno and Grasso, who appeared to be in contact regularly in the fall of 2019. Over a series of calls, Poliseno grew increasingly worried about the death of a man in the woods in Delaware, who appears to have been veterinarian Dr. Edward Conner.

A Gold Alert was issued for Conner on Oct. 11, 2019, informing the public that Delaware State Police were looking for him and that he had been missing since Oct. 2. Conner had last been seen in the area of his home on Pinepitch Road in Harrington, Del., and was apparently not with his vehicle.

The photo attached to the alert shows Conner with a heavily-bandaged face bearing bruises and cuts, which Delaware State Police say was his driver's license photo. The following day, on Oct. 12, the Gold Alert for Conner was cancelled. Poliseno's conversation with Grasso took place in the evening on Oct. 11.

Edward Conner. Photo courtesy Delaware State Police

“They sent 10 police cars there and they searched the woods, the property and finally found him. Ain't that a bitch,” Poliseno said.

“Did they arrest her or no?” asked Grasso.

“I don't know. They didn't tell me that. I guess it will hit the papers tomorrow.”

Poliseno then turned the conversation to what Conner's disappearance and death could mean for him. He had been using Conner's veterinary license information to purchase drugs for resale, and now he believed he was about to be caught. It never becomes completely clear in the transcripts whether Poliseno was concerned he had dated some prescriptions for a period of time after Conner had disappeared, or if he was afraid the veterinarian's death might prompt scrutiny of Conner's or Poliseno's life and his business associates.

“But it puts me in a lot of trouble,” he tells Grasso. “Because now that they know he is dead I can't buy it through any suppliers or anything under his license. You know.”

“That's true,” said Grasso. “Well yeah I guess … I mean who is going to find out right away that he is dead? Nobody … It's not like they are looking at the newspapers looking.”

“You don't think that the suppliers would look?” Poliseno said.

“Aaah,” said Grasso.

“I got Boothwyn, Rapid. NexGen is in Texas, they wouldn't know. Midwest wouldn't know,” continued Poliseno.
“ …. Till the end of the year. When does his license run out?”

“End of July.”

“Next July?”

“Yup.”

“You might not have a problem until next July.”

“These other vets are going to turn me in if I try and operate.”

“Well that's a different story.”

From there, the two discuss plans to help Poliseno continue his operations without detection.

“They are closing in on me,” Poliseno tells Grasso in a call on Oct. 15. “Listen, send me a copy of your New Jersey or New York license.”

“What do you mean they are closing in on you?” asks Grasso.

“Well NexGen just told me that Doc Conners, they know he died. You know, and Rapid knows that he died. So now they know that he is dead.”

“Alright,” said Grasso.
“So I said, 'Send me a copy of one of the licenses in New Jersey.' Fax me a copy, you got the fax number?”

Poliseno, who said he had $150,000 worth of drugs with Conner's name on their prescriptions, discussed with Grasso his status with each of the pharmacies he was working with to secure drugs for illegal distribution. Among those mentioned were Boothwyn Pharmacy, which in 2005 was cited by the Pennsylvania Board of Pharmacy for having expired drugs on its shelf during a routine inspection. In 2017, Boothwyn received a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration alleging it was producing drugs in violation of federal law, including failure to follow certain procedures to prevent contamination or assure sterility. The warning said Boothwyn was producing unapproved new drugs, and compounding drugs “intended for conditions not amenable to self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals who are not medical practitioners.”

“Rapid” seems to be a reference to Pennsylvania-based Rapid Equine Solutions, which was implicated in the death of two racehorses in the spring of 2019 after a technician switched the concentrations of two active ingredients of a medication for Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis (EPM). A subsequent FDA inspection found “insanitary conditions,” “potency issues,” and misbranding. In summer 2019, prior to Poliseno and Grasso's phone call, officials who inspected Rapid Equine Solutions described “an unknown white film on the floor in the sterile production room and debris in the corners of the room.” The inspection also reported several bugs lingering around the sterile and non-sterile preparation areas, while fly tape hung from the ceiling above the laboratory sink. It was also cited by the FDA for selling large quantities of compounds to a veterinarian who distributed them without prescriptions. Rapid has since voluntarily suspended its state pharmacy board licenses.

BRD, also known as Buy-Rite Drugs, is also referenced in their conversations. BRD was the source of an injected supplement that triggered strychnine overages in harness horses in Pennsylvania in 2019. Buy-Rite has also been the subject of state sanctions for shipping sterile compounds to a state where it was not licensed.

According to other documents from prosecutors, Grasso was no stranger to having his license used by laypeople. He allegedly wrote prescriptions as requested by trainers without examining their horses for $100 per script, sometimes making it appear that EPO and other substances were being ordered for treatment of nonexistent horses, or sometimes, a fictional dog named Butch. Grasso also manufactured and sold PEDs, including EPO, red acid, snake venom, and bronchodilators, according to prosecutors. Poliseno is alleged to have recruited Grasso to produce PEDs for distribution through his Delaware-based Equine Veterinary Supply company, including adrenal stimulants, sedatives, and other substances.

It seems Conner, too, was familiar with the notion of having his name used in unconventional ways – around the time of his death, he was the focus of Delaware racing investigators looking into the sad case of Glencairn.

[Story Continues Below]

Glencairn, a 5-year-old son of Candy Ride, suffered a catastrophic breakdown in a $5,000 claiming race at Delaware Park on Aug. 5, 2019. The horse, whose prior start was for a $25,000 tag in April, was a ship-in and a heavy favorite in his August return to the races. A mortality review investigation revealed records indicating the horse had received shockwave therapy five days prior to the race, despite Delaware's regulation that it not be administered closer than ten days ahead of a race. Shockwave is a beneficial therapeutic treatment to aid in healing, but is also thought to create temporary analgesia, which is why there are limits on its use at the track. Delaware also requires the therapy to be administered by a licensed veterinarian and reported to the commission.

Stewards issued six-month suspensions and $1,000 fines to two licensees in connection with the shockwaving of Glencairn – trainer Anthony Pecoraro and David Neilson, who owned Alpha Omega Farm in Townsend, Del. Neilson has been licensed as an owner and a trainer, but was not the owner of Glencairn. The horse's owner, who reported the shockwaving to the commission after he got the bill, faced no penalties.

“I met with Mr. Pecoraro later in the week and he indicated that the horse had been mostly training on a farm called Alpha Omega where he was jogging and swimming because he had ankle problems and they didn't think the horse could handle the everyday training at the racetrack,” read a report from the Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission's safety steward after an August 2019 interview with Pecoraro. “It turns out the horse couldn't handle racing either.

“Mr. Pecoraro assured me that the horse's ankles were X-rayed several times for any sign of fractures and it didn't show anything. I'm just not convinced that training a horse on a farm under someone else's supervision and then shipping the horse in a few days before the race and running him is a proper way to operate. That horse was away from Mr. Pecoraro's supervision a whole two weeks before it ran.”

Both Pecoraro and Neilson appealed their penalties from the Delaware stewards. At the appeal hearing before the full Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission in early 2020, Neilson said it was Conner who was responsible for the shockwaving of Glencairn, and that Neilson billed hundreds of dollars to have horses shockwaved at his facility while paying Conner $20 per treatment.

Neilson also claimed, according to a report by Delaware Online, that the date on the bill for shockwaving was wrong, and that in fact the horse's treatment had occurred outside the ten-day window.

By that point, Conner was dead and unable to provide any insight on his relationship with the horse. Strangely enough though, the Delaware News Journal reported that Delaware steward Tony Langford spoke with someone who claimed to be Conner in early November 2019 in the course of conducting the investigation into Glencairn.

“The phone number Langford called to speak with Conner had been given to him by Neilson, he said,” wrote the Delaware News Journal's Kevin Tresolini. “Apparently, nobody was aware Conner had died or, if they did, weren't saying.”

The man he spoke to identified himself as Conner and sounded elderly, said Langford, who made the call to learn more about Conner's visit to Neilson's farm.

Langford told Tresolini:

“He was rambling. You could tell I'd aggravated him when I called him. I said, 'Can you check your records?' He said 'I don't keep records.' 'Wait a minute, by law you're supposed to keep records. The veterinary board requires those records.'

“I asked him if he was Dr. Conner and he said 'Yes.' But as far as I know, it could have been his great uncle, I don't know.”

The Delaware commission ultimately undercut the stewards' rulings, reducing Neilson's penalty to a one-month suspension and a $1,000 fine because they believed he was ignorant of the rules and guilty mostly of poor recordkeeping. For Pecoraro, they overturned the penalty altogether because they said the stewards had failed to cite the absolute insurer rule that would have made him culpable for Neilson's actions. Delaware Online reported that commissioners repeatedly praised Neilson throughout the hearing for his two decades spent as a police officer in New Castle County. (The commission at that time included the same principals who later sparked public outrage when they reduced trainer Amber Cobb's suspension for cruelty from two years to two months.)

In addition to his activities as an owner, trainer and therapeutic facility owner, Neilson also revealed he was an equine dentist and that he owned a licensed pharmacy called EquiHealth Products, though he was not licensed as a pharmacist himself. Instead, Neilson said, he “subcontracted” with veterinarians to provide the products offered on the company's website.

The website is no longer active, but an archived version of the site states the business was “your online source for quality animal health products, medications, and blood tests. We can provide pick up, delivery or UPS service from our location in Delaware. We also can drop ship direct to your location from our manufacturers … EquiHealth makes veterinary products more accessible, convenient, and affordable. Our on staff veterinarian is available for product recommendations, blood test evaluations as well as offering vaccinations and Coggins tests.”

The site's product list included a number of injectable products, as well as two different products called EPO.

Pecoraro has resumed training and is still in the Mid-Atlantic area. Neilson still owns horses on track and in 2021 was keeping his string with trainer Juan Vazquez.

Delaware Park in Wilmington, Del.

Neilson was the subject of an investigation by the Delaware Board of Veterinary Medicine in 2020 after the board received two complaints that he was practicing veterinary medicine without a license. The investigation concluded with no charges brought against him.

Neilson has not been implicated in the federal indictments in any way, but he is just a few degrees of separation from one of Grasso and Poliseno's co-defendants. In 2012, he co-owned a racehorse with fellow New Castle law enforcement officer and trainer Silvio Martin. Martin has fought his own battles against a state racing commission, including a 2020 search of his vehicle that revealed possession of hypodermic needles, syringes, injectable substances, and unlabeled medication, triggering a 180-day suspension. The suspension was later increased when the commission determined he was conducting business related to racing while serving a suspension.

Martin has not started a horse since August 2020. One of the horses Martin saddled in his last season as a trainer was Legendary Jack, a Thoroughbred owned by indicted harness trainer Rene Allard.

In a gruesome phone call included in charging documents for Allard, Ross Cohen and Grasso were intercepted allegedly discussing illegal drug use gone wrong at Allard's training facility.

Cohen: What's going on with the Allard death camp?

Grasso: (Laughter) well I didn't get any more emergency calls yesterday so I am assuming

Cohen: Assuming the number stopped at 7?

Grasso: Well yeah

Cohen: How many died?

Grasso: Three

Cohen: Jeez. What were you thinking?

Grasso: Three or two maybe.

Grasso and Cohen continue to discuss the effects of the drugs on the horses.

Cohen: Ok, maybe it was just the batch that Allard got I guess I don't know.

Grasso: They got high fever kidneys shut down.

Grasso: …One of them just died on the table they just cut him open and poof it died.

Cohen: Holy f-k did they do an autopsy?

Grasso: Their heart rate was like triple they were breathing real heavy their membranes were going f-ing purple.

Grasso and his co-defendants have their next status conference scheduled for Feb. 1.

Despite Poliseno's concerns in those October 2019 calls to Grasso, it seems Dr. Conner's death was unnoticed by online news sources. And, officially speaking, it's still not exactly clear what happened to him.

“I spoke with the detective that handled the case and he informed me the autopsy was labeled as undetermined due to the decomposition of the body when he was located,” said Master Corporal Gary Fournier, public information officer for the Delaware State Police. “He was located behind his residence in some woods. From his investigation, there was nothing more to go on and the case was closed.”

What is clear, however, is the tired truism that horse folk so often trade – racing can be a really small world.

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