Shane Mosley vs. Victor Conte

Shane Mosley vs. Victor Conte
By Steve Kim (Jan 5, 2009)

On January 24th, Shane Mosley faces WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, California. For Mosley, it's another in a long line of arduous battles he has taken on throughout his Hall-of-Fame career. But right now, it's not the only fight he faces going into the future. In recent months, his legal team has done some highly publicized legal sparring with Victor Conte, the founder and owner of BALCO, as they have attempted to clear Mosley’s name in connection with the 2003 federal raid that implicated the Californian - along with many other athletes - in the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs in the lead-up to his rematch with Oscar De La Hoya that same year.

Through this scandal, which forever stained the reputations and careers of numerous world class athletes, Mosley would come out of it relatively unscathed. For one, with boxing being a niche sport, Mosley wasn't scrutinized to the level of say a Barry Bonds, and unlike the all-time home run king, he enjoyed a reputation among the fans and media of being a likable and affable sort. The public perception was that he was one of the good guys that had simply - and unknowingly - made a mistake. As much of the attention was centered on the likes of Bonds and other more famous performers, for Mosley- who was eventually called upon to testify in front of a grand jury for his participation in this sordid affair - life and his career would move on relatively unhindered.

But in 2007, as he prepared for a bout with Miguel Cotto, an SI.com report was published that detailed his use of two separate designer steroids and EPO prior to his bout with De La Hoya in 2003. When asked about this by Tim Smith of the New York Daily News in a story that came out on September 29, 2007 ('Shane Mosley admits to using BALCO steroids') he would state, "We were misled by (Conte). I guess I got the clear and the cream."

To which Conte would respond via email, "I've never misled or deceived any athlete. I've always been a man of full disclosure."

Then Mosley would tell Lance Pugmire of the LA Times in November of that year that his then-strength and conditioning coach Darryl Hudson had influenced him to take the BALCO products, saying to him that they would be, "icing on the cake." It wasn't soon after that Hudson would file a defamation suit versus Mosley.

In the ensuing months, Conte made it very clear that Mosley was very aware of the substances he was ingesting and how to administer them into his body. It was at that point that Mosley and his legal counsel, headed by Judd Burstein, filed a $12 million defamation suit in federal court in San Francisco this past April. This legal action kiboshed plans for Conte's book on BALCO's exploits, which had significant references to Mosley. Burstein would tell Teri Thompson and Nathaniel Vinton of the New York Daily News, "As soon as they publish the book we're going to sue them the next day."

And this is when things got interesting, as the case was moved 3,000 miles east.

Conte, speaking exclusively to Maxboxing, would explain, "Basically what happened is that we filed an anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) motion; basically this is what you do when there's no merit to a lawsuit and it's strictly a PR stunt and it's frivolous. So that was our response and we were getting ready to file a motion and there were some issues that came up about Shane and his residence. And what we discovered was that he had represented in a court case, under oath, two weeks before we deposed him, that he was a resident of California. And when we deposed him he said he was a resident of Nevada. Now, you can't be a resident of both states at the same time, so in one of the cases he was not being truthful. We believe it was in our case because he lives in California, his children go to school in California, and he operates his business out of California. He may have income or properties that he owns in Nevada and may have income that he has there fighting, but it was clear, in our opinion, that he's a California resident. So once we told them that we were going to bring this issue up, which could have possibly led to discussions of tax fraud, because one of the two times he was not being truthful, we know he's misrepresented a number of things to the grand jury. So what happened was they agreed to withdraw the federal lawsuit and we found out later that the exact same day they withdrew the federal case, they filed another case in the state court of New York."

Then just a couple of weeks ago, Conte and his legal team filed a motion to dismiss Mosley's suit in New York state supreme court. This memorandum, which was filed on December 23rd, quotes Mosley's own testimony in those formerly guarded grand jury transcripts, where Mosley admits to doping and using two separate types of 'designer' steroids. Part of the memorandum reads, "Mosley did not even attempt to characterize this substance as a legal 'vitamin' during his grand jury testimony and categorically acknowledged that erythropoietin (EPO) was used to boost 'hematocrit'".

In a story that was published on December 24th, 2008 in the New York Daily News, it was written by by Thompson and Vinton, "Doping calendars that were seized from BALCO and used as reference points for Mosley's grand jury testimony show that he was using steroids and EPO in the lead-up to that fight."

And, "In his testimony, it became clear that Mosley never acted like a man who thought BALCO's products were legal vitamins. He flew to San Francisco to pick them up, paid Conte $1,850, would not fly with materials but rather had them shipped by FedEx, injected them into his abdomen, worried greatly about their danger to his health, tapered off his use in the lead-up to drug tests, and discontinued his injections after the fight."

Coming into his rematch with De La Hoya in September of 2003, Mosley's career had hit a rough patch. In addition to consecutive losses to Vernon Forrest, he had struggled mightily in February of that year in a three round no-contest versus Raul Marquez. The rematch with ’the Golden Boy' was thought of as a make-or-break encounter for Mosley.

"I was initially contacted by Darryl Hudson and we talked about all sorts of things with him and he talked with Shane and the two of them flew up and met with me at my office near the San Francisco airport and before that morning they went over the freeway and got his blood samples collected. We basically talked about an undetectable performance enhancing drug program. There were also nutritional recommendations made as well. But we knew from the very beginning that that was the purpose of the trip up there - for me to design a program that would assist in his upcoming fight. That was July 26th of 2003 and this would assist him with his De La Hoya fight, which was on September 13th of 2003," recalled Conte.

By 2003, those who were going to BALCO to seek Conte's assistance had to know they weren't going to their local GNC.

“There were many, many different athletes in different sports that I worked with. You have to understand that not all of them received drugs," he points out. "I never, ever provided any drugs to any younger athletes, most of the athletes were 25 and above, most of them were 30, 35 and above, in age. So before I took the trip down the slippery slope in the year 2000, I'd worked with world-class athletes, Olympians and professional athletes since 1984, so a lot of athletes that I had worked with, I did not provide performance enhancing drugs."

Quite simply, for many years, the need for non-detectable drugs was not needed in many sports or leagues.

“For example, at that point in time, baseball players didn't have testing, football players did, Olympic athletes, pro bodybuilders did not and so on. So if an athlete was not subjected to any sort of testing, then there really wasn't any need to have my sophisticated level of approach to that. But boxers, they don't have the greatest testing program in all of sport, but they certainly do have testing and specifically at the fights."

Conte details the regimen he put Mosley on: "I did recommend that he take a program that included 'the clear' - which was an undetectable steroid. That specific species that he was using was called 'THG'. Also, 'the cream' which was a testosterone, an epi-testosterone blend, with a ratio of 20-to-1. Which was basically undetectable, as well. And then the performance enhancing drug in terms of oxygen uptake and utilization, EPO, and there's a specific way that you use that. First of all, there's what you call the 'corrective phase'. Basically, that means you use it every other day for a period of two weeks. Before you start you get a baseline blood level which is for your hematocrit - which is the percentage of red-blood cells compared to the whole blood volume. And then after two weeks you have your blood tested again to make sure you've used the right number of units and you hit the target in terms of increase, and thereafter you enter what you call the 'maintenance phase', which is basically once-a-week, maybe somewhere between seven and ten days apart. But you obviously design the program around a specific competitive event.

“So we started on July 26th and there was a very detailed program, which included tapering certain substances so that they would be non-detectable on September 13th."

Conte says that not only does he have doping calendars that map out Mosley's usage of the performance enhancing substances, he and Hudson have filed sworn affidavits that not only tell of how it was explained to Mosley what substance he was taking - and how legal they were - but then witnessed him injecting EPO into his body through his abdomen.

This case is eerily similar to that of one Marion Jones, once America's darling and a multi-gold medalist in track and field, whose web of lies unraveled as she tried to distance herself from BALCO and the use of banned performance enhancing substances. Back in 2004, as Conte came clean about his role in Jones' success, she responded with a $25 million lawsuit for defamation.

She then spent most of this past year in federal prison as she finally admitted her transgressions.

"I call this legal stage here with Shane, I've referred to it in the past as 'Marion Jones Part II,'" says Conte. "Similar situation, to have the knowledge, to have done the drugs right in my presence, as well as the presence of others, all sorts of detailed paper trails that exist, an overwhelming mountain of evidence that exists and then the day after the infamous raid, it started with the grand jury and the questioning. I believe that it has everything to do with the advice these athletes got from their legal counsel that really has led them in the wrong direction. That's simply my opinion. It seems that the smartest thing - now of course hindsight is 20-20 - was to just come forward, tell the truth, do it for all the right reasons, ask for forgiveness, do what you can do to redeem yourself. And I think we live in a forgiving society and they will allow you to move on. But when you lie and you do so publicly and you do so vehemently, strongly, over and over again, you're just digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole.

“In the case of Marion Jones, after we saw here earlier this year in January of 2008, here she is on the Federal Building steps crying and apologizing that she had lied for five years and eventually that led her to a prison sentence."

What also upsets Conte is because of the legal filings by Mosley and his legal team, his book, for now, has been shelved. Burstein had threatened to go not after just Conte and Skyhorse Publishing, but any insurance firm underwriting the book. The publishing company would eventually walk away from the project. Burstein would tell the New York Daily News on December 24th, "The publisher plainly concluded that publishing anything Conte had to say about Mosley would be reckless. The next step is probably we're going to have a deposition of Victor Conte."

While his words in the book have been suppressed, Conte believes Mosley's own words in the grand jury testimony could lead to his eventual downfall.

“Here’s what he did, which is similar to what others did, and that's the following: they were truthful about some of their drug use and they lied about other aspects of their drug use. So regarding 'the Clear' and 'the Cream', Shane Mosley lied. Regarding EPO, he came forward and made a full admission. And towards the end he started to break down and he did admit under oath that he knew it wasn't flaxseed oil, he knew it was something else. So he knew exactly what it was. I think it was a result of some poor questioning," opined Conte. "But this is the thing that bothers me; it's not just Shane Mosley, there were probably half-a-dozen athletes who just told lies, just like he did to the grand jury. Yet, you've got this selective prosecution of Barry Bonds. And my opinion is the evidence against Shane and some of these others athletes is far greater than it is against Barry Bonds. Yet it seems that the bigger the name.... it doesn't make sense, they blackballed Barry Bonds from baseball. He couldn't get job offers to work for minimum wage. Yet, you got Shane Mosley with a $2 million guarantee for an upcoming fight here in January."

Regardless of what you may think of Conte - who spent four months behind bars for distribution of illegal steroids and tax fraud - and his actions of the past, those who have gone against him, whether they be Jones, Tim Montgomery or Kelli White, have all gone down for the count. All Mosley had to do was be truthful or say nothing, according to Conte.

"There would have been no reason for me to talk about Shane whatsoever," he says. "I did get informed about the lawsuit that had been filed - this was a journalist from the LA Times about the Darryl Hudson lawsuit against Shane - so I was informed about that, but even then, I really had no comment about it. I figured at some point in time they would probably drag me into it. My intention was to not say anything about Shane or any of the other athletes I was associated with during my time at BALCO. So no, there would have been no reason to talk about Shane if he hadn't have publicly misrepresented the facts to the media."

When asked what he would like to accomplish in this instance, Conte is adamant. "It's simply to set the record straight," he says, without hesitation. "He came out and he told a lie. He said I 'misled' him. I didn't mislead him or any other athlete; I was a man of full disclosure with all of the athletes I worked with. So it's just those few athletes, Marion Jones, Kelli White, Shane Mosley, Tim Montgomery, that have come out and suggested that I tricked them in some way. That I gave the performance enhancing drugs and told them they were vitamins.

“Well, look at it realistically, a month or five weeks of vitamins don't cost $1,800, like in the case of Shane Mosley. You don't inject vitamins. This is something that should be very obvious to people about who's lying and who's telling the truth and that's the main purpose - to set the record straight. But you've got to understand, I'm defending myself. Shane Mosley filed a lawsuit against me, so I'm obligated to defend myself."

There is a January 15th hearing in San Francisco regarding all this.

"And we have filed a motion for sanctions against his legal counsel and for attorney’s fees," stated Conte. "We filed this motion in New York but I can guarantee you that it's going to be amended and we're going to go for sanctions and attorney’s fees in New York. The next step after that is going to be for damages."

Coming Tuesday, Part II - Boxing and Performance Enhancing Drugs.

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E-Mail Steve: k9kim@maxboxing.com

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