Veterinarian Dr. Erica Garcia was sentenced on Dec. 12 to ten months in federal prison after entering a guilty plea to two misdemeanor counts related to the large-scale racehorse doping case that broke in March 2020.
Garcia was ordered to pay a fine of $2,000 and is ordered to surrender to begin her sentence in March 2023. She will serve her time at a facility in Florida. She is also subject to one year supervised release after her sentence is complete.
Garcia entered a guilty plea to two counts of introducing into interstate commerce adulterated and misbranded drugs.
According to documents filed by attorneys for both sides ahead of the sentencing hearing, Garcia worked for Navarro during Florida winters for 11 years until they ceased their professional affiliation in April 2019. She admitted she administered non-FDA approved substances to Navarro's horses at the behest of Navarro and an unnamed veterinarian from up north.
“He had six or seven horses when I met him,” Garcia wrote in her letter to U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil. “At first impression, I found him to be an ambitious young man hell bent on trying to prove himself. He used to flirt with me while I was tending to my clients in other barns, but I never took him seriously. Then one day I started working for the vet who worked for Jorge which therefore, by default, made me Jorge's vet too. We got along pretty well. He was very focused and you could tell he really cared. One day he left for a couple of years to try his luck at some of the other tracks.”
Garcia administered red acid, which she purchased from RacehorseMeds, a drug called “monkey” (which she said she thought was a vitamin shot), compounded clenbuterol, and SGF-1000.
Garcia's defense team summarized the results of testing on some of the substances Garcia admitted to giving to horses.
“Based on information and belief, red acid is an anti-inflammatory containing hyaluronic acid,” read the defense's pre-sentencing report.
The report also said a test on the substance called “monkey” contained “trace amounts of cobalt.”
Read our previous reporting on cobalt as a performance-enhancer here and here.
In her letter, Garcia summarized the rise and fall of her former client as she saw it.
“He never cut corners on the care of his animals,” Garcia wrote of Navarro. “He studied other leading trainers and tried to incorporate some of their methods into his own training style.
“Then, after a couple of years, things started to change. I think the pressure got to him. He used to say he was going to fire all his clients and go back to training only 20 horses, then 15 new horses would show up in the following week. Around this time, someone introduced him to the standarbred[sic] trainers. They began telling him what to do and tried to convince him to manage his business the way they did. He stopped listening to me as his vet and I could see things were not going in the right direction. I probably should have left then. Stupidly, I stayed.”
“….Time went on and Jorge was no longer the person I had first met. The pressures of the industry were unyielding. The expectation to be the best and to keep improving, growing and winning became very taxing on him.”
Garcia admitted in her letter to the judge that she used SGF-1000 on “another trainer's horse” but did not name the trainer and also that she continued using red acid after she left Navarro's employment in April 2019.
Attorneys for both sides attribute the professional split between Garcia and Navarro to a decision by Garcia or someone on her team to report a suspected case of strangles from Navarro's barn. According to Garcia, Navarro didn't want the scrutiny this could bring from state animal health officials and did not want to be subjected to a quarantine that would limit training.
There were no strangles outbreaks reported in Florida in April 2019, according to the Equine Disease Communication Center.
Since her arrest, Garcia has been working with small animals, exotic animals, and injured wildlife. She still has her veterinary license in Florida although she is precluded as a condition of bail from working on racehorses and has had her track license revoked.
Prosecutors, who had sought a 24-month prison sentence, concede that their decision to allow her to plead guilty to misdemeanors rather than felony charges means the state veterinary board may use its discretion when it decides whether to revoke her veterinary license.
State licensing boards typically do not consider a licensee's status until a criminal case against them has fully resolved.
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