Former harness trainer Rick Dane has been sentenced to 30 months in prison over his role in the 2020 federal racehorse doping case, reports the Thoroughbred Daily News. He was also ordered to pay a monetary judgement of $33,912.
Dane had previously entered a guilty plea on one felony count, with a second felony charge dropped based on a plea bargain with the prosecution. He is to report to prison on Jan. 9, 2023.
In the original indictment released in March 2020, Dane is characterized as having assisted Seth Fishman in distributing his adulterated and misbranded products. He is specifically alleged to have asked Fishman to provide him with performance-enhancing drugs for trainee Glass Prince in February 2018, and to have asked Lisa Giannelli in 2019 about purchasing and delivering more misbranded and adulterated drugs.
Fishman has been sentenced to 11 years in prison, while Giannelli was sentenced to 3 1/2 years.
The government's sentencing submission details that Dane “not only purchased performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and prescription drugs from Giannelli that he was using to dope his horses, the defendant also served as a trusted resource for Giannelli by providing background on potential new clients who could be considered 'trustworthy.'”
Owner-trainer Carl Moore's Jes An Angel, who recorded the fastest time trial and was the morning line favorite for the $3 million All American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico on Sept. 5, was scratched from Quarter Horse racing's marquee event by order of the stewards on the morning of the race after she was observed allegedly being treated with a nebulizer.
Izzy Trejo, executive director of the New Mexico Racing Commission, said the state's administrative code prohibits race day use of a “nebulizer or similar device used to administer a drug or other substance.”
Trejo said the treatment was observed by an enforcement team from the American Quarter Horse Association on hand for the All American. “We had the luxury of having boots on the ground, which is necessary for this kind of thing to be found,” Trejo said. “They were making their rounds around seven in the morning when they came upon the horse.”
Moore purchased Jes An Angel for $10,000 at the 2021 Heritage Place September Yearling Sale in Oklahoma and paid $50,000 to supplement the daughter of Jess Zoomin to the All American Futurity. Jes An Angel had won five of seven starts, including her Aug. 19 All American trial in which she ran the 440 yards on a sloppy track in 21.257 seconds. Scheduled to break from the number eight post position, Jes An Angel had been installed the 5-2 morning line favorite in the finals.
A Facebook post purported to be from Moore said “politics kept us from running.” Moore said he had purchased a nebulizer and saline solution from a veterinarian at the track and “we had been administering it for over a month every day. We administered it the morning of the race which they say is not allowed the morning of the race however when you read the rule this is not clear. We take full responsibility in using the saline solution on race day but they pounced on it giving them the opportunity they had been waiting on to keep her from running the race.”
Trejo said the rule is clear.
“We expect people to understand what the rules are,” Trejo said, “especially when you are running for $3 million.”
Trejo said a hearing would be scheduled on the matter.
Moore said he will point Jes An Angel to the Dash for Cash Futurity Trials on Sept. 16 at Lone Star Park.
Lisa Giannelli was sentenced Sept 8 to 3 1/2 years in prison as part of the federal government's sweeping investigation into horse doping at racetracks across the country.
Giannelli, 56, was found guilty of peddling illegal performance-enhancing drugs to trainers to dope horses and faced a maximum of five years in prison. Her lawyers appealed for a no-jail sentence of probation.
“This was not a one-time thing,” Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil said in U.S. District Court in New York. “For 18 years, Ms. Giannelli marketed and sold what she knew were illegal and powerful performance-enhancing drugs.”
Vyskocil said that with its verdict the jury had rejected Giannelli's argument that she didn't know that what she was doing was illegal when she worked for Equestology, a Florida company owned by veterinarian Seth Fishman.
Giannelli, of Dalton, Del., was also sentenced to two years of supervised release after she gets out of prison. She was also ordered to pay a fine of $100,000 and to forfeit $900,000.
The government's investigation into the illegal use of PEDs to dope horses led to charges against 31 individuals. Since the charges were announced 30 months ago, Giannelli and Fishman have been convicted by juries, and 22 others have pleaded guilty. Fishman was sentenced in July to an 11-year prison sentence.
Those who have pleaded guilty include trainer Jorge Navarro. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
Trainer Jason Servis was also charged and is awaiting a trial scheduled to begin in New York in January.
Prosecutors said Fishman had designed PEDs to increase a horse's performance and endurance by building red blood cells and masking pain. The substances were designed to avoid showing up in post-race tests conducted by racing regulators.
At the sentencing, prosecutor Sarah Mortazavi said Giannelli's actions on behalf of Fishman's company warranted the maximum sentence.
“Her criminal conduct touched hundreds of trainers and led to the doping of thousands of horses,” she said.
Mortazavi said Giannelli has yet to really accept responsibility for her actions and that it was only after the jury's verdict that Giannelli offered a “mealy-mouthed explanation for her conduct.”
Giannelli came to court with 13 supporters. Among them was a man she married while under indictment and his mother.
Lisa Giannelli at the time of her arrest
“It was never my intention to break the law,” Giannelli said.
She said that her arrest and conviction have left her life shattered.
“It was never my intention to hurt anyone or to hurt any animal,” Giannelli said. “Everything in my world now is upside down.”
“At this point I wish I had never met Fishman,” she said.
“I thought I was doing good,” she added. “I never knew it was not legal.”
Defense lawyers pleaded for a sentence of probation in court papers that detailed Giannelli's troubled upbringing and her abusive relationships with men. She said she obtained a license to train horses at harness tracks. She said she met Fishman in 2004 and became his sales representative.
Lawyer Alex Huot said Giannelli was not doing anything she wasn't instructed to do by the doctor.
“She took Dr. Fishman at his word,” Huot said.
But Vyskocil told Giannelli she should have known better because the conduct she engaged in occurred when she was an adult.
The judge said Equestology's PEDs were powerful substances that she believed could have and did kill horses.
Vyskocil said that in fashioning the sentence she took into account Giannelli's background, her character, and more than 50 letters from Giannelli's family and friends.
“The letters all reflect that you are a kind person, and have a passion to make things better,” the judge said.
At the end, she told Giannelli that she was sorry for her, for the situation that brought her to court.
“I do believe you are a good person,” the judge said. “You have your whole life ahead of you.”
The Thoroughbred industry's leading publications are working together to cover this key trial.
The New Mexico Racing Commission is conducting its own investigation into jockeys accused of participating in unsanctioned racing. In early August, the Washington Post published an investigative feature detailing the horrors of bush racing at a track in Georgia, where the Post reported horses were given injections immediately before races, horses ran with no pre-race examinations by veterinarians, illegal betting took place, and jockeys openly carried buzzers.
Some investigative work was done by representatives of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and later by Post reporters directly. PETA has since called for sanctions on what the organization claims are licensed jockeys documented participating in bush races at the Georgia facility.
PETA has alleged it has identified riders Bryan Candanosa, Alex Carrillo, Eduardo Nicasio, and Rodrigo Vallejo as riding at bush tracks while carrying electric shock devices known as buzzers.
NMRC executive director Izzy Trejo told the Paulick Report Sept. 1 that the commission is conducting its own investigation into the allegations, but proof of participation is limited.
“We are currently doing our own investigation after finding that the pictures utilized by PETA in the Washington Post article were merely photos taken from Facebook pages and not much more information than that,” said Trejo. “Although they do have a video that we need to look at.
“The jockeys in question did ride at Ruidoso a week and a half ago and we had an enforcement team there to scrutinize the jockeys with metal detection wands, as well as the pony people, the assistant starters, the valets, the jockey quarters, and the starting gate itself (all the nooks and crannies). Nothing was found but we will continue to investigate these suspect jockeys.”
