x y jet | Horse Racing Free Tips

The Week in Review: Fishman’s Defense is Hard to Swallow

Indicted veterinarian Seth Fishman started to tell his story last week, both to a jury and to the Washington Post. Fishman, currently on trial in a federal courtroom in Manhattan for his role in a widespread scheme to dope racehorses, wants you to believe that he is an animal lover who was devoted to working for the benefit and health of the horses he treated. He wants you to believe that the drugs he dispersed were given to help and heal and not to improve performance.

“It will be for the government to prove that his intent and purpose was something other than limiting animal suffering.” Fishman's attorney Maurice Sercarz told the jury during opening arguments of Fishman's trial, which also includes his associate Lisa Giannelli.

The government has said otherwise, that he was a relentless horse doper, had close ties to Jorge Navarro and was obsessed with winning races and manufacturing drugs that were undetectable.

From Fishman's team, it's textbook stuff. Our client is misunderstood. There are two sides to every story. It's really horse racing that is dirty and not Seth Fishman.

The problem is, they don't have anything to back it up. The government has done its job and done it well. The original indictment includes a trove of evidence that Fishman was cold and calculating, cared nothing about the animal and would inject a horse with anything he could find if he thought it would help the horse win a race and collect a purse. Their claims are backed by a treasure trove of evidence.

According to the original indictment, after X Y Jet (Kantharos) won the G1 Dubai Golden Shaheen, Fishman sent a text congratulating Navarro. Navarro replied: “Thank u boss u are a big part of it.” The reference, allegedly, is to Fishman's role in procuring drugs for Navarro to use on X Y Jet, who later dropped dead.

There's more, and, from the indictment, the government's conclusion is that treating and healing horses were not a part of Fishman's play book, despite his position as a veterinarian. The indictment charges that Fishman “did not perform medical examinations, provide a diagnosis, or otherwise evaluate the medical necessity of providing PEDs in advance of selling PEDs. Indeed, the administration of those PEDs was not intended to be therapeutic, but rather to increase the chances of winning horse races.”

Sunday, we learned that the government is requesting to enter into evidence charges that Fishman was investigated in Delaware more than a decade ago after a standardbred died after being injected with one of his products.

Yet, it appears that Fishman is intent on portraying himself as a heroic figure. In a Washington Post story that ran Wednesday, the reporter writes that Fishman depicts himself as “a sort of racetrack St. Francis of Assisi.” He also told the Post that the reason he continued to fight the charges was because “I'm going to take one for the team of veterinarians.”

According to the Post, Fishman defied his lawyer's wishes when granting an interview to the paper. No doubt, his legal team can't be pleased with what was a rambling, strange interview in which he did himself no favors and didn't present any credible evidence that has been wrongly accused. Rather, he stuck to the “I'm really an animal lover, please believe me” defense.

He goes on to claim that what this is really all about is the sport trying to make itself more attractive to bettors by offering a cleaner product…as if that is a bad thing.

From the Post story: “Fishman claimed that the real motive of those seeking regulatory reform was to make the sport more palatable for bettors by eradicating any foreign substances–at the expense of the animals. “I don't think the veterinary world should have to answer to a gambling product that seems to be getting more and more corrupt, not less corrupt,” Fishman said. “The animals' needs need to be put before the gamblers' needs.”

In another weird exchange with the Post, Fishman said that in another case, the feds had asked him to wear a wire in an attempt to catch racetrack cheats. He refused to do so, telling the paper that “to make them happy I would have had to violate two of the Ten Commandments. Just say for biblical reasons I couldn't do it.”

The trial will continue Monday, and unless his attorney has some sort of unforeseen trick up his sleeve, it appears that the defense strategy will be more of the same. Their defense is weak, but that's likely because it's all that they have.

It means they are hoping the jury will ignore the evidence presented by the government and buy into Fishman's claims that he's, well, not such a bad guy. According to Pew Research, fewer than 1% of all federal criminal cases result in the defendant taking their case to trial and winning. The most likely scenario is that the self-described animal lover will come out on the losing end here and his future includes a stint in a federal prison.

In Doping Trial, Are New Names About to Surface?

The opening day of testimony in the Fishman-Gianelli trial included what may turn out to be a bombshell, courtesy of the government lawyers. Prosecutor Anden Chow told jurors that the government's case would include the testimony of trainers who bought Fishman's drugs.
It was unclear what exactly that means, but what if it means that trainers who were not included in the original indictment are about to step forward and admit they bought PEDs from Fishman? Surely, Fishman sold his goods to many others not included in the indictment. If any new trainers do come forward, it's likely they worked out a deal with the government to avoid prosecution. But if anyone comes forward and admits using illegal PEDs, they would surely face sanctions from tracks and racing commissions, which, very well, could mean a lifetime ban.
Stay tuned.

The post The Week in Review: Fishman’s Defense is Hard to Swallow appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

View From The Eighth Pole: Soul Searching, Restitution In Order For Owners Who Supported Jorge Navarro’s Stable

From Jan. 1, 2016, through March 8, 2020, trainer Jorge Navarro won 741 races from 2,468 starts. That's a win percentage of an unfathomable 30%.

The owners of those runners earned $24,360,514 in purse money.

That's 741 wins and millions of dollars in first-place money that, in my opinion, rightfully belongs to someone else. The judge who sentenced Navarro to five years in prison agrees. She has ordered Navarro to pay restitution of $25,860,514, an amount he surely doesn't have unless the owners who benefited from his cheating are willing to fork it over.

Here's just a few examples.

There's the $180,000 that Lael Stable should have received for a win by the stable's Divining Rod in the Grade 2 Kelso Handicap at Belmont Park in 2017. The Arnaud Delacour runner had to settle for $60,000 after finishing second behind what we can only assume was a juiced Sharp Azteca, who raced for the Gelfenstein Farm of Ivan Rodriguez. Divining Rod, a son of Tapit, was deprived of a G2 win, something that also would have had ripple effects on the catalogue page of his family female.

Another horse cheated out of a graded stakes win by Sharp Azteca was Brittlyn Stable's Forevamo, trained at the time by Al Stall. The Uncle Mo gelding finished second in the G3 Pat Day Mile Stakes at Churchill Downs in 2016. He would have earned $141,050 for first place but instead received just $45,500. His owner didn't get the glory of standing in the Churchill Downs winner's circle with the Hall of Fame jockey for whom the race is named or get new hardware for their trophy case.

It is about the money, but it isn't JUST about the money.

I learned that from Josie Martino, who with husband Salvatore Delfino raced Wildcat Red in the colors of their Honors Stable Corp. The son of D'Wildcat won six of 22 starts for trainer Jose Garoffalo, including the G2 Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park in 2014.

Two years later, Wildcat Red finished second in the Sunshine Millions Sprint Stakes at the South Florida track, earning $29,100. The winner of the $90,210 first-place prize was X Y Jet, who at the time was racing for Gelfenstein Farm and trained by Navarro. The trainer would later admit to injecting the horse with illegal performance enhancing drugs.

X Y Jet dropped dead two months before Navarro was taken into custody as part of the sweeping FBI investigation that led to indictments against more than two dozen trainers, veterinarians and drug suppliers.

No owners have been charged, though those who gave horses to Navarro to train may have benefited the most from his cheating.

Martino and Delfino hit it big with Wildcat Red, a $30,000 OBS 2-year-old purchase who earned $1.1 million in 22 starts. He was one of the first horses campaigned by their small stable. Yet even with the horse's success, Martino said in a phone call to the Paulick Report, she and her husband feel cheated by having to compete against a juiced Navarro runner in the Sunshine Millions. “We are speaking out in Red's honor,” said Martino, an admitted animal lover who was stunned by Navarro's callous treatment of horses. “Red can't talk, but he deserves to be heard. What happened wasn't right and it wasn't fair to the horse.”

In virtually every one of the 741 races won by Navarro from 2016-'20, there are similar stories of horses, owners, trainers and jockeys being deprived of a victory and higher purse money. It might be a claiming race or a stakes, on dirt or turf, in New York, New Jersey or Florida. Cheating is cheating at any level.

The owners of horses trained by Navarro who gained financially by his serial doping might benefit from some serious soul searching. If it's only about winning, if that's why they sent horses to someone so brazen that he had a customized pair of shoes with #juiceman printed on them in big letters, this game would be better off without them. It will survive.

In the now-famous video filmed at Monmouth Park in the summer of 2017, when Navarro and one of his owners, Randal Gindi of Monster Racing Stables, joked about Navarro being the “juiceman,” the trainer had a brief moment of candor.

“We f – – k everyone,” Navarro said.

He wasn't kidding.

That's my view from the eighth pole.

The post View From The Eighth Pole: Soul Searching, Restitution In Order For Owners Who Supported Jorge Navarro’s Stable appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

The Week in Review: Time to Bring the Hammer Down on The Juice Man

The Jorge Navarro case was back in the news last week as lawyers representing the federal government submitted a sentencing letter regarding the disgraced trainer to Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil. They recommended that Navarro get the maximum allowable sentence for doping racehorses under his care, five years. He will be sentenced Friday.

The government lawyers did their job and they did it well, and they want no mercy for the Juice Man. Read the sentencing letter and the first conclusion you will come to is probably the same one I had–that five years is not nearly enough.

We already knew what Navarro was doing. He was pumping every toxic chemical he could find into every horse he had, all in an effort to win more races and collect more purse money, never once concerned about the welfare of the animal.

“Jorge Navarro's case reflects failings, greed, and corruption at virtually every level of the world of professional horse racing. For money and fame, corrupt trainers went to increasing extremes to dope horses under their care,” the filing begins.

It continues: “Navarro's aggressive pursuit of PEDs–and his eagerness to use racehorses under his care to test the potency of novel PEDs–displayed a particularly callous disregard for the well-being of the horses under his care and control.”

What we didn't know until the latest court filing was released was just how brazen and unrepentant he was. It may not seem possible, but Navarro's core was even more rotten than we had thought.

The government maintains that Navarro “considered his prolific doping campaign a badge of honor.” How else do you explain why he owned a pair of shoes emblazoned across the front with the words “#JUICE MAN.”? Or that in 2018 he sent a text to trainer Marcos Zulueta that included pictures of monkeys, rockets, syringes, horses and pills, apparently a reference to a drug he was using called “monkey.” The pictures were proceeded by the words “Te encanta,” Spanish for “You love it.” Or that he received via text a GIF from an unnamed associate that showed a syringe loaded with money?

“The intensity of Navarro's doping was matched by his apparent glee in this illicit conduct,” the government writes.

The government also wants Navarro to pay $25.8 million in restitution to those he cheated out of purse money. It's not clear how they came up with that number or who exactly is entitled to the money. It's also highly unlikely that Navarro has $25.8 million, or anywhere close to that. So this part of his punishment may not go anywhere, but it's good to see that the government is also going after whatever money he has.

Then there was the prediction from Navarro's lawyer in a filing that the trainer will most likely be deported to his native Panama after serving his sentence. Good riddance.

Earlier this month, in a pre-sentencing report of their own, Navarro's defense team asked the judge to limit his sentence to 3 1/2 years. In doing so, they painted a much different picture of their client. They say he loved his horses and that his insatiable desire to win tainted his judgment.

Their filing included statement from several individuals who vouched for his character. One came from veterinarian Joel Lugo, who recalled Navarro's reaction to the death of star sprinter XY Jet (Kantharos). The horse died in January, 2020 from what Navarro said was a heart attack.

“I remember the day when XY Jet passed away,” Lugo wrote. “Jorge called me crying to tell me directly the news. I know Navarro was devastated because he truly loved XY Jet.”

Jockey Jose Ferrer wrote of Navarro that he “admired his hard work ethic and love for both the sport and the animal.”

Such sentiments are laughable. Anyone who can do to these animals what Navarro did does not love their horses. Navarro abused his horses.

“These are among some of the factors that put the lie to Navarro's submission and his multiple letters of support quoted in and appended to Navarro's sentencing submission, in which third parties claim that Navarro made decisions for the health and well-being of his horses,” the government wrote. “That notion simply does not comport with the hundreds of conversations wherein Navarro sought PEDs to use on his horses, discussed administering novel PEDs on his horses, pushed horses in poor physical shape to compete, and displayed indifference at the physical ramifications of administering PEDs to horses.”

One can only hope that Vyskocil agrees. Send him to prison for five years. Deport him. Take away his money. It's time for the Juice Man to get what he deserves.

And What About Navarro's Owners?

The government's sentencing letter includes a recapping of a conversation with the owner of a horse named Nanoosh (Paytner). The unnamed owner and Navarro discuss the horse's recent poor form and the owner asks him if he was “giving them [Nanoosh] all the shit?” The owner also asked Navarro, “Is this horse jacked out? Is he on fucking pills or what or are we just fucking -,” Navarro responded, “Everything…he gets everything.”

The same exchange was also referred to 21 months ago when Navarro was originally indicted. According to Equibase, the horse was owned by the partnership of Rockingham Ranch, Zayat Stables LL and David A. Bernsen LLC. Rockingham Ranch and Bernsen are still active owners. Zayat, due to problems unrelated to Nanoosh, is not active in the sport.

Doesn't anyone in the sport want to get to the bottom of this? It can't be that hard to find out who the owner was that had the discussion with Navarro. Once the name is revealed, that person should be barred from the sport immediately and permanently.

The Remsen Fiasco

Protests seeking to overrule stewards' decisions usually don't get very far, but the case of this year's GII Remsen S. is one where the New York Gaming Commission should absolutely reverse the order of finish. The Aqueduct stewards got this one wrong.

The race came down to Mo Donegal (Uncle Mo) and Zandon (Upstart), who were noses apart as they headed toward the wire. Aboard race winner Mo Donegal, jockey Irad Ortiz, Jr. appeared to go out of his way to intimidate his rival. The two bumped near the wire with, according to the Equibase chart, Ortiz throwing “repeated exaggerated crosses with the left rein near the face of the runner-up…”It got so bad that Ortiz appeared to strike Zandon with his elbow.

Mo Donegal won by a nose.

Zandon's owner Jeff Drown filed his protest last week and maintained that his horse would have won if not for Ortiz's antics. He's not wrong.

It's not just that the stewards blew this decision. That it involved Ortiz was not a surprise. A day earlier, riding a horse named Gran Casique (Algorithms), he dropped another rider when, down the backstretch, he came over several paths on his way to trying to maintain a position on the rail. For that ride, he was hit with a 30-day careless riding suspension.

For months, Ortiz's critics have been calling him out for his overly aggressive riding style and, in particular, his penchant for herding other horses and riders. Yet, until the Gran Casique race, the NYRA stewards had more or less looked the other way. That appeared to embolden Ortiz.

Yes, the stewards did the right thing when they gave Ortiz the 30-day suspension. But they reverted to form in the Remsen. They didn't take Mo Donegal down and they didn't suspend or fine Ortiz for his ride. Once again, when it came to Ortiz, the wrong message was sent.

The post The Week in Review: Time to Bring the Hammer Down on The Juice Man appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

‘Animal Abuse In The Service Of Greed’: Prosecutors Reveal More About Navarro’s Doping Program, Boastful Text Messages

The federal government has submitted its sentencing letter for former trainer Jorge Navarro, and let's just say it's a juicy one.

“Jorge Navarro's case reflects failings, greed, and corruption at virtually every level of the world of professional horse racing,” the document, filed Dec. 10, began. “For money and fame, corrupt trainers went to increasing extremes to dope horses under their care. Unscrupulous owners, who stood to profit directly, encouraged and pressured trainers to win at any cost. Veterinarians sworn to the care and protection of their patients routinely violated their oaths in service of corrupt trainers and to line their own pockdets. Assistants and grooms all witnessed animal abuse in the service of greed, but did little to stop such conduct, and engaged in myriad ways to support notoriously corrupt trainers. Structures designed for the protection of the horses abused in this case failed repeatedly; fixtures of the industry — owners, veterinarians, and trainers — flouted rules and disregarded their animals' health while hypocritically incanting a love for the horses under their control and ostensible protection. Standing as the keystone for this structure of abuse, corruption, and duplicity was Jorge Navarro, a trainer who treated his animals as expendable commodities in the service of his 'sport.'”

Navarro is due to be sentenced Dec. 17 after entering a guilty plea to one count of drug and adulteration misbranding conspiracy. He was charged with two counts in a November 2020 superseding indictment. Last week, his defense team filed its recommendations to U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, including 100 pages of character testimony from family, friends, former employees, and former owners, many of whom claimed Navarro cared deeply for his horses.

The prosecution takes issue with that characterization, laying out new details about Navarro's doping program and his attitude about his ongoing use of medications he seemed to know were illegal.

Friday's sentencing documents say that Navarro's program, which stretched back to at least 2016, included blood builders allegedly made by co-defendants Gregory Skelton and Dr. Seth Fishman, vasodilators, baking soda drenches, bleeder pills from Fishman, SGF-1000, “an imported, misbranded bronchodilator” and other substances.

Navarro was also on the lookout for new substances, the filing reveals, making inquiries about a new, pink-colored pain medication as well as “an experimental topical cream on a horse that was anticipated to have the same effects of a baking soda drench.”

Horses subjected to the program included X Y Jet, War Story, Shancelot, Sharp Azteca, and Nanoosh, according to the documents.

Prosecutors focused particularly on the medications given to X Y Jet, which were detailed somewhat in the federal indictments. Friday's document provided a few more details on what the horse experienced in early 2019.

A few days before a Feb. 13, 2019, allowance optional claiming race at Gulfstream Park, Navarro contacted co-defendant Marco Zulueta and said, 'I have a problem and you need to get me out of it,” asking for a bottle of a pain blocker to use on X Y Jet because the other 20 bottles he had ordered had not arrived. Zulueta promised to overnight the drug so it would be available to Navarro in time for the horse's race. Navarro then allegedly called fellow trainer and co-defendant Christopher Oakes, saying the horse had tied up for the first time that day. The pair discussed administering a baking soda “drench” to the horse immediately and another on race day. Zulueta tried to convince Navarro not to race the horse after his tying-up incident, but Navarro dismissed his concerns, saying he had treated the horse right away.

[Story Continues Below]

The prosecution's account continued:

“The next day, on February 12, 2019, the day before the race, Navarro reached out to yet another individual and solicited items that could be used to drench X Y Jet: 'I need the tube, the pump and the bucket.' When Navarro was asked if someone else would be 'tubing' the horse, Navarro responded: 'Yes. No, you cannot — cannot tube him because you will go to jail, man. My friend is going to tube him. My friend is going to prepare a milk shake for him,' later adding, 'This is between you and I.' On a separate call with a representative of one of X Y Jet's owners, Navarro confirmed that he planned to milkshake the horse, and when asked whether the horse would then test positive, Navarro responded, 'Don't worry about it. I use something that covers the baking soda, the bicarb.'”

On race day, in correspondence with Zulueta, Navarro said he wanted to learn how to “tube” horses because “I would tube all my horses.” Zulueta warned Navarro that “You have to be [expletive] careful. I tried — I tried to do that and I almost killed the horse — the horse, man. It went to the lungs.” Navarro responded simply, “Yes.”

X Y Jet won his race that day, and in his next start won the Group 1 Dubai Golden Shaheen, which had a US$2.5 million purse. For that race, Navarro said he did not tube the horse, but gave him “50 injections” which were “through the mouth” to avoid detection — apparently a reference to what prosecutors say was Navarro's strategy of giving certain drugs orally if he had reason to suspect a racing official may detect a needle mark on a horse's neck.

X Y Jet, who had had three knee surgeries by the time of the allowance race in question, suffered a sudden death following a workout in Florida in January 2020, two months before Navarro's arrest. The horse's connections ordered a necropsy, not the state's Department of Pari-Mutuel Wagering, so the report has not previously been subject to public records request. Friday's documents revealed the “necropsy could not determine a cause for the heart attack; notably, Navarro's communications in the first quarter of 2019 indicated that, even one year prior, X Y Jet … was struggling, but was then medicated so he could race competitively.”

It is not uncommon for necropsy reports in the cases of “sudden” or “apparent cardiac” deaths to be inconclusive as to the horse's cause of death, particularly in absence of any physical abnormalities in the heart or other organs.

The document also references an anonymous individual who adopted a former Navarro trainee and said that after leaving the trainer's barn the horse was “disfigured and unable not only to race competitively, but to do very much at all” and that it “suffers from recurrent and painful physical problems.” In the horse's last race with Navarro in September 2019 the unidentified horse ended the race with a serious injury that required him to be vanned off.

Although he was constantly on the lookout for new substances and techniques to get a performance edge, the documents state, Navarro apparently spent some time worrying about whether his communications might be monitored, urging contacts to be careful in their discussions of the medications, and discussing steps he took — like having products shipped to people other than himself — to make it harder for regulators to catch him.

At the same time though, Navarro appeared to have no qualms about bragging about his activities to close friends. A search of his barn revealed a pair of customized shoes with the phrase #Juice Man across the toes.

In 2017, Navarro and owner Randal Gindi were fined $5,000 by Monmouth Park stewards for a video captured of the pair cheering on a horse trained by Navarro's brother, Marcial Navarro winning a race at Gulfstream Park.

“Adios, amigos. Adios, amigos,” Gindi was heard saying in the video. “The juice man!”

Navarro responded: “Is that a Navarro? Is that a Navarro? Is that a Navarro at 2-1? That's the way we do it.”

“That's the juice. That's the vegetable juice,” replied Gindi.

“We f – – k everyone,” said Navarro.

“We f – – k everyone, and I line my pockets with the bookie with another twenty thousand,” said Gindi. “Oh, yeah! Life is great.”

At the time, Navarro complained to the Paulick Report that the statements overheard in the video were a type of strange congratulation.

“Everyone wants to pick on Navarro when I win a race,” Jorge Navarro told the Paulick Report at the time. “They call me the 'juice man,' even when my kids are around. My son is 10, my daughter is 7. How many fingers do you have to count the number of times I hear that stuff? But I'm going to keep winning races.”

Navarro himself texted the following image to Zulueta in July 2018, apparently partly in reference to a misbranded substance the two referred to simply as “monkey.”

On January 26, 2019, the day two Navarro horses ran at Gulfstream and Tampa Bay Downs, an unnamed Navarro associate sent the trainer a gif depicting a syringe's plunger pulling back and loading the syringe with dollar bills.

It also seems clear that prosecutors believe Navarro was well aware of the risks associated with the adulterated and misbranded substances he was using – some of which were injectables so far removed from a Food and Drug Administration-approved manufacturing facility that they were simply in plain plastic bottles with instructions written on them in permanent marker.

In one case, Navarro was overheard on wire taps referring to a pain medicine Navarro had been offered that was so powerful “the guy [offering Navarro the drug] says he has killed about four horses already … he is saying the horses can't take it, and die.”

In another conversation, Navarro compared notes with Zulueta on the physical side effects to one intravenous performance enhancer, asking whether the horses “start sweating, get warm.” Zulueta relayed his horses were soaked wet with sweat after receiving injections, to which Navarro asked whether the drug was working.

In reference to his administration of steroids to horses, Navarro declared he is “a man who destroys” and who “is racing against the best horses in the United States.”

Prosecutors are requesting the maximum prison sentence outlined in an agreement with Navarro's attorneys at the time of his plea change – five years in federal prison – and are also requesting a three-year supervised release condition that would require him to relinquish his racing license for that period of time.

Navarro's attorneys said in their filing last week that it's very likely the Panama native will be deported at the conclusion of his sentence.

Additionally, Navarro has already agreed to forfeit a total of $70,000, which represents the value of drugs he allegedly obtained and gave to racehorses. He has also agreed to pay restitution of $25,860,514 – representative of the amount of purse earnings he got during the illegal doping conspiracy. For the first time, Friday's documents revealed this restitution would be paid to “those entities from whom purse winnings were obtained through the immediate effect of Navarro's fraud.” A list of those entities and a schedule for payment was filed under seal.

Navarro's sentence will be determined on Dec. 17. The judge is not bound by the agreements between the prosecution and defense, and will take both sides' reports under advisement.

Read the full document filed by the prosecution here.

The post ‘Animal Abuse In The Service Of Greed’: Prosecutors Reveal More About Navarro’s Doping Program, Boastful Text Messages appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post