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Servis Negotiating with Feds for Plea Bargain

The barred trainer Jason Servis, the final–and most notoriously prominent–defendant awaiting a trial or sentencing in the 2020 racehorse doping conspiracy scandal, is negotiating with federal prosecutors for a plea bargain agreement to adjudicate the three felony drug misbranding and fraud conspiracy charges he is facing for allegedly drugging almost all the Thoroughbreds under his care in 2019.

The disclosure was revealed late Friday afternoon in an otherwise routine court filing asking for an extension of time to file motions in Servis's upcoming trial, which has a Jan. 9 start date.

“The Government and counsel for defendant Jason Servis are currently in discussions regarding a potential pre-trial disposition, which may obviate the need for trial,” wrote United States Attorney Damian Williams in his letter to the court.

The request for extra time was granted by Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil of United States District Court (Southern District of New York).

The Dec. 2 filing also referenced a change-of-plea hearing that same judge had granted the day before to the New York-based veterinarian Alexander Chan, who is accused of his own trio of felony charges related to injecting purported performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) into Servis's horses and then hiding the charges from billing and veterinary records.

Chan, as part of his plea change, could very well implicate his former client, Servis, during his Dec. 5 hearing.

That's what another veterinarian who worked for Servis, Kristian Rhein, did in August 2021 when he changed his own plea to guilty on one felony count within the federal government's sprawling prosecution of an allegedly years-long conspiracy to dope racehorses. Rhein got the maximum sentence of three years imprisonment for his crimes.

Chan and Servis were scheduled to be tried together next month.

“In light of the foregoing, the parties respectfully contend that a brief adjournment of the upcoming deadline [to file motions] will facilitate the parties' ongoing efforts to reach a resolution short of trial,” Williams wrote to the judge.

The feds have already disclosed they have a trove of wiretapped evidence involving Servis speaking about his doping regimens to Rhein, Chan, and the now-imprisoned trainer Jorge Navarro, who in December 2021 was sentenced to five years behind bars for his rampant criminal usage of equine PEDs.

Some of those secretly recorded phone conversations involved the MGISW Maximum Security, who crossed the wire first in the GI Kentucky Derby, but was DQ'd for in-race interference.

One of the elixirs of choice for both Servis and Navarro was SGF-1000, a custom-made, purported PED intended to promote tissue repair and increase a racehorse's stamina and endurance beyond its natural capability. The two trainers discussed this PED in an intercepted call on March 5, 2019. The transcript reads as such:

Servis: I'll tell you what, Jorge. I'm using that [expletive] shot. What is it, SGF?

Navarro: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I got, uh, I got more than 12 horses on that so I'll let you know, okay?

Servis: I've been using it on everything, almost.

Navarro: Jay, we'll sit down and talk about this [expletive]. I don't want to talk about this [expletive] on the phone, okay?

Servis: All right. You're right.

On June 5, 2019, a call between Servis and Rhein went like this, according to the feds:

Servis: Are you by yourself?

Rhein: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just walked out of the barn.

Servis: Hey. So they've been doing some out-of-competition testing, which I have no problem with. Um, they took Maximum Security Monday and they came back again today. But Monday he got the KS. I just want to make sure we are all good with that.

Rhein: Wait, what did he get?

Servis: I'm sorry, I said “KS.” The, you know, your shot. The…

Rhein: Oh, the SG.

Servis: Yeah, that stuff.

Rhein: Yeah-no, no, no. The Jockey Club tested it, and I met the guy who tested it way back when. It comes back as collagen. They don't even have a test for it.

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Giannelli Trial Continues

Lisa Giannelli testified at her horse doping trial May 4 that she had a good reason for wanting to testify in her own defense.

“To tell my story,” she told the jury in U.S. District Court in New York.

She is on trial on a conspiracy charge, accused of assisting veterinarian Seth Fishman in the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs that prosecutors say were used by corrupt trainers to dope racehorses in violation of racing regulations.

During three hours of questioning by her attorney Louis Fasulo, Giannelli, who admitted being nervous when her testimony began, told the jury that it was never her intention to defraud any racing commissions.

She also testified that she never benefited financially when trainers decided to break the rules to win races.

And she testified that she never agreed with Fishman to engage in fraud.

“It was never my intention,” Giannelli testified.

The testimony came on the trial's sixth day in front of Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil.

The trial resumes May 5 with closing arguments and then possibly jury deliberations.

Prosecutors say Fishman, who was convicted in February and faces 20 years in prison, manufactured PEDs that Giannelli sold out of her home as an employee of Fishman's company Equestology.

Giannelli testified it was her understanding she could sell whatever products Fishman created because he was a licensed veterinarian.

“I was just to take orders,” she told the jury. “I was not to give medical advice or offer a medical opinion or act as a veterinarian.”

Giannelli testified drugs she kept in her home that the FBI seized when she was arrested in 2020 were “items of Dr. Fishman that clients called in for as needed.”

She said Fishman manufactured his products without her help and that she knew little about them.

Gianelli also testified that she wasn't involved in designing labels for those products.

Asked then by Fasulo why another Equestolgoy employee sought her input on the color of a new drug bottle's cap, she replied, “Dr. Fishman was color blind.”

She also said that in conversations with Fishman it was hard to know what he was talking about.

Giannelli told the jury she didn't know what he meant when he told her about “stem cells” in a 2019 call that was wiretapped by the FBI.

“He is rambling and I was just like 'yeah,'” Gianelli testified. “Dr. Fishman rambled a lot.”

When asked why she sold drugs without any label on the bottle, she said, “That was a decision by my boss. It was what it was.”

On cross examination, prosecutor Sarah Mortazavi asked Giannelli if she knew the difference between prescription and non-prescription drugs.

“My employer did,” the witness testified, adding that she knows the difference now.

“But you didn't at the time?” Mortazavi asked.

“I know only know what Dr. Fishman told me,” Giannelli replied.

At another point, Mortazavi asked Giannelli if she had suggested new products for Fishman to make a Equestology.

“Yes,” the witness said.

“So now you are clarifying your testimony on direct in which you testified that you didn't suggest new products for Seth Fishman to make?” the prosecutor asked.

“Correct,” Giannelli testified.

At the start of the cross-examination, Mortazavi asked Giannelli about her days working as a groom and a trainer at harness tracks decades ago, before she began working for Fishman. Giannelli acknowledged her license was suspended when a horse tested positive for TCO2.

“It was a bicarbonate,” the witness testified.

“Is that baking soda?” Mortazavi asked.

“Bicarbonate is whatever bicarbonate is,” Giannelli told the jury.

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

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Cohen Cross-Examined As Giannelli Trial Recesses for Weekend

Day three of Lisa Giannelli's horse doping trial Apr. 29 featured the cross-examination of a key government witness.

Former New York harness trainer Ross Cohen had testified that Gianelli had sold him performance-enhancing drugs that he used to secretly dope horses under his care.

He agreed to cooperate with the government after his arrest in 2020 in connection with the FBI's sweeping horse-doping probe.

The investigation led to charges against a number of individuals including the prominent trainer Jason Servis.

Under questioning by Giannelli attorney Louis Fasulo in U.S. District Court in New York, Cohen was asked about his cooperation agreement in which he admitted to fixing races years ago as well as to doping horses.

Fasulo wanted to know if that was his incentive for becoming a cooperator–to avoid being charged with bribery and facing substantially more punishment.

“My incentive was to try to make right for my wrongs and tell the truth,” Cohen said in response.

Under further questioning, he said it could have been an incentive but then wasn't sure.

“I guess it could have been,” Cohen testified. “I don't know if it was an incentive or not at the time.”

Giannelli is on trial for conspiring to distribute adulterated and misbranded performance-enhancing drugs which were intended to enhance the performance of horses competing at racetracks across the country.

She worked with Seth Fishman, a veterinarian found guilty in February of manufacturing PEDs that were purchased by trainers to dope horses. Prosecutors say Fishman's drugs were designed to avoid post-race testing.

Fasulo told the jury that when Giannelli worked for Fishman out of her home in Delaware, she didn't do anything wrong because her actions didn't involve criminal intent.

Cohen was reluctant to talk about his race-fixing past under Fasulo's probing, part of an effort to damage Cohen's credibility.

At first, Cohen testified he couldn't remember how many races he fixed by bribing drivers to hold their horses back.

“It was more than five, I don't think it was over 20,” he told the jury.

He also couldn't remember how many drivers he paid off, then admitted, “maybe 10.”

When questioned by prosecutor Sarah Mortazavi, Cohen said his cooperation deal doesn't prevent prosecutors from other jurisdictions from charging him with bribery.

He hasn't been sentenced yet and said it would be up to the judge to determine his punishment.

The day concluded in the afternoon with the prosecution reading into the record portions of a witness's testimony from the Fishman trial.

The witness was Courtney Adams who worked for Fishman as an office manager for five years. She was unavailable to testify against Giannelli.

In her testimony, Adams said that Giannelli helped with labeling Fishman products. Prosecutors contend some of those labels violated federal regulations.

“She would suggest edits so the client would know what the product was,” Adams said in her testimony.

During the reading, prosecutors also showed the jury a 2013 text in which Fishman said that Giannelli made over $250,000 in 2012.

During her cross-examination, which was also read into the record, Adams admitted to Fasulo that she didn't know if that was true or not.

The trial resumes Monday.

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

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Cohen Testifies in Giannelli Trial

Day two of Lisa Giannelli's horse-doping trial in a New York courtroom began April 28 with opening statements and ended with testimony from an ex-harness trainer turned government cooperating witness.

“The defendant wasn't just in the doping business, she was in the deception business,” prosecutor Benjamin Gianforte told the jury in U.S. District Court in New York.

But defense attorney Louis Fasulo countered by saying that his client couldn't be found guilty because her actions lacked criminal intent.

“Intent,” he wrote in large letters on a computer screen for the jury of eight men and four women to read.

Fasulo said intent was the crux of the case. “What was Lisa Giannelli's intent? Why did she do what she did?”

Giannelli is challenging the government's evidence against her in a case growing out of the federal government's crackdown on horse doping at racetracks across the country. The defendants included the prominent trainer Jason Servis who faces trial in early 2023.

Giannelli is being tried on one count of conspiring to violate federal law prohibiting the adulteration or misbranding of drugs.

In his opening, Gianforte said that for more than two decades Giannelli distributed illegal performance enhancing drugs that corrupt trainers used to dope horses. He said the drugs clearly violated racing regulations. But that didn't stop the cheaters, he said.

“Why? Because fast horses win money,” the prosecutor said.

Gianforte said the drugs Ginannelli sold were sought after because they were designed not to show up in post-race testing.

“Professional horseracing is highly competitive,” the prosecutor said. “Winning highly lucrative.”

Those create a huge temptation to cheat and defraud others, he said.

“That's what doping amounts to-fraud,” he said.

Gianforte never mentioned by name a key figure: the veterinarian Seth Fishman who manufactured the drugs Giannelli sold at racetracks and training centers. Her customers were mostly harness trainers.

In February, Fishman was convicted of conspiracy. Fasulo told the jury that Giannelli would testify that she did nothing wrong.

“She will tell you what she did and why she did it,” he said. “We're not hiding from that.”

He told the jury that horse racing was a sport in its purest sense and “how it is manipulated goes to the people in the sport.”

He said the trial wasn't about PEDs or horse racing or whether animals should be subjected to drugs. And he said it wasn't about Fishman “with his own motives that he kept” from Giannelli.

“At no time did he tell her she was doing anything wrong in fulfilling his orders,” he said. “She was not the veterinarian; she was not the doctor.”

The cooperator was Ross Cohen, who took the stand after an FBI agent and an FBI photographer testified about law enforcement searches conducted at Giannelli's home in Felton, Del., in 2020 and at Fishman's warehouse in Boca Raton, Fla., in 2019.

Cohen was arrested in 2020 during the government's big takedown. He has since pleaded guilty as part of cooperation agreement with the government.

Cohen, 50, testified that he purchased performance enhancing bleeder pills from Giannelli when he was training horses in New York.

Under questioning from prosecutor Sarah Mortazavi, Cohen said Giannelli told him that he should give the pills to horses on the day of a race even though that would violate race regulations.

“She said they do not test for it at this time, but there was no guarantee they'd always not test,” he testified.

He said testability was important to him.

“I did not want to get suspended and fined and have the owners lose the purse money,” Cohen said.

Earlier in the day, prosecutors showed the jury a 2016 text that Giannelli sent to Fishman referring to Cohen.

“Propanthelene bromide? Ross Cohen is asking about it,” Giannelli wrote.

“Have but it tests,” Fishman replied.

Cohen testified the substance is a bronchodilator that increases a horse's airways. He told Mortazavi he didn't remember talking to Giannelli about that. His testimony resumes April 29.

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