Victor Conte

Early life and music

Victor Conte Jr. was born in 1950 in Fresno, California to a Shirley and Victor Conte Sr., he was the oldest of three children in a working-class Italian family. He graduated from McLane High School. After high school he attended Fresno City College but dropped out of college in 1969, after he was convinced by his cousin, musician Bruce Conte to join the band Common Ground and play bass. In 1970 he quit playing in Common Ground and joined Pure Food and Drug Act (band). At the time he had the nickname "Walking Fish" from his unusual body movement across the stage during his days playing. He left the band Pure Food and Drug Act before 1977.

Victor Conte was a member of Tower of Power from 1977 until 1979 playing bass guitar, and he also collaborated during that period with pianist Herbie Hancock and violinist Sugarcane Harris.

Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative

He founded in 1984 the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), a sports nutrition center first located in Millbrae, California and later relocated to Burlingame, California. The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) says developed the banned steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) with the help of bodybuilding chemist Patrick Arnold. Pursuant to a plea bargain struck with prosecutors, he entered guilty pleas in July 2005 to one count of conspiracy to distribute steroids and a second count of laundering a portion of a check, he was sentenced in October to spend four months in the federal Taft Correctional Institution in Taft, California, and another four on house arrest.

In December 2004, he participated in an interview with Martin Bashir on ABC's 20/20 program, where he admitted to running doping programs, which have broken Olympic records, as well as revealing that: "The whole history of the games is just full of corruption, cover-up, performance-enhancing drug use."

In the interview he implicated, among others, five-time Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones and her partner Tim Montgomery, Kelli White (who later admitted using performance-enhancing drugs), British athlete Dwain Chambers, and NFL player Bill Romanowski.

On 21 December 2006, Yahoo Sports reported that one of Conte's initial defense lawyers, Troy Ellerman, had been targeted by the FBI as a possible source of leaks to the media during the Barry Bonds probe. On February 14, 2007, Ellerman pleaded guilty to leaking grand jury testimony. It was also reported that FBI agents were an additional source of leaks.

In May 2007, Conte claimed to again be providing supplements for Dwayne Chambers, who left athletics to play in the NFL Europa league for the Hamburg Sea Devils. According to Conte, these nutritional supplements, provided via his company Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning, are perfectly legal.

On December 13, 2007 Conte appeared on CNN before the Mitchell report was officially released.

Books

Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports was published in 2006 by two San Francisco Chronicle investigative reporters, relating to the case. There was controversies about the informant and/or source of the information for these books and related court cases.

In 2008, in the aftermath of the investigation, Conte produced a book BALCO: The Straight Dope on Barry Bonds, Marion and What We Can Do to Save Sports which was co-written with author Nathan Jendrick. There had been a legal battle of defamation litigation regarding the book's publication by boxer Shane Mosley and it delayed the publication date. Mosley dropped the lawsuit, but not before Skyhorse publishing had been scared away from publishing, the book is officially unpublished as 2017 but the unpublished manuscript has been made available.

Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning

In 2011, Conte started a new company, Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning (SNAC Nutrition) based in San Carlos, California, which in addition to nutritional supplements also offers boxing and sports training. SNAC Nutrition is working with boxer Zab Judah, and Conte has previously worked with Andre Berto, Nonito Donaire, and Andre Ward.