Harness trainer Rene Allard has been included in a superseding indictment filed in federal court last week against Louis Grass, Donato Poliseno, Thomas Guido III, and Richard Banca. All defendants have entered not guilty pleas to one count each of drug adulteration and misbranding conspiracy for their role in what prosecutors say was a scheme to “manufacture, distribute, and receive adulterated ad misbranded PEDs and to secretly administer those PEDs to racehorses under scheme participants' control.”
The allegations in the Dec. 3 indictment are nearly identical to those in the indictment filed against Grasso, Poliseno, Guido and Banca in February and March of this year. The timing of the indictments and arrests earlier in the year coincides with a larger case also from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York into alleged doping schemes utilized by Thoroughbred trainers Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis.
At that time, a complaint was filed against Allard but prosecutors requested several extensions of time in the case throughout the spring and summer. The complaint details Allard's involvement in the alleged scheme with his co-defendants, as recounted by FBI special agent Bruce Turpin.
Turpin stated that Grasso, who had a veterinary license, worked for Allard. Turpin also stated Grasso operated a company that manufactured adulterated and misbranded drugs. Last week's indictment explained that Grasso allowed his veterinary license number to be used by non-veterinarians calling in orders to pharmacies for a charge of $100 per prescription, despite not knowing what the non-vets were prescribing to themselves. The drugs involved in the scheme allegedly included bleeding medications, pain blockers, and EPO-like products, among others. Poliseno stands accused of purchasing and distributing the drugs made by Grasso. Guido and Banca are fellow harness trainers.
The drugs, according to the indictment, were designed to be undetectable in testing.
The substances appeared to carry significant risk to the horses, according to court paperwork. An intercepted conversation between Guido and Grasso about the death of an unidentified horse indicated Grasso thought the horse had been “over juiced” with a bleeding medication.
“I've seen that happen 20 times,” Grasso said.
The complaint filed earlier this year against Allard includes bits of a conversation intercepted by federal agents between Ross Cohen (named in the original indictment alongside Navarro and Servis but absent from a later indictment in that case) and Grasso about Allard's barn. According to the transcript of the phone call from fall 2019, Cohen referred to Allard's operation as “the Allard death camp,” referring to two or three horses that died after receiving what Grasso said was an amino acid supplement from Weatherford, Texas compounding pharmacy NexGen.
A search of an office at a Middletown, N.Y. training center where Allard kept horses revealed empty syringes, bottles of injectable products labeled “for research purposes only” and bottles with labels the agent suspected did not match the content.
The superseding indictment calls for the defendants to forfeit assets acquired as a result of the alleged criminal acts.
Allard was the winningest trainer in 2019 at Pocono Downs is one of the top trainers at Yonkers. Allard was also previously excluded from the Meadowlands by owner Jeff Gural, as was Banca, according to a report earlier this year from Thoroughbred Daily News.
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