Among those charged was Jason Servis, the trainer of Maximum Security. More than two dozen racehorse trainers, veterinarians and drug distributors were charged in a wide-ranging scheme to secretly dope horses and cheat the betting public, according to federal indictments unsealed on Monday in Manhattan. Among the 27 people charged was Jason Servis, the trainer of Maximum Security, one of the best racehorses in the world and one who benefited from a doping regimen, according to one of the indictments. Servis covertly administered performance-enhancing drugs “to virtually all of the racehorses under his control,” the indictment charged, adding that from 2018 to February 2020 he entered horses in more than 1,000 races.
In May, Maximum Security crossed the finish line first at the Kentucky Derby, only to be disqualified for almost knocking over a rival horse and slowing the momentum of others. Country House, a 65-1 shot, was named the winner. Maximum Security went on to win four of his next five races — including the $10 million first-place check last month in the world’s richest race: the Saudi Cup at the King Abdulaziz racecourse in Riyadh. The scheme, as described in four separate indictments against a total of 27 people, was to manufacture and distribute adulterated and misbranded drugs and to secretly administer them to racehorses under their control.
The participants sought to improve race performance and obtain prize money from thoroughbred and harness racing tracks throughout the United States, including in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Ohio and Kentucky, as well as the United Arab Emirates, one indictment said, “all to the detriment and risk of the health and well-being of the racehorses. ” To avoid detection of their scheme, the indictment said, the defendants routinely defrauded and misled federal and state regulators “and the betting public. ” At a news conference announcing the charges, Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said that the case was the most far-reaching prosecution of racehorse doping in the history of the Department of Justice and that the investigation was continuing.
The defendants, he said, had acted “not for the love of the sport and certainly not out of care for the horses, but for money. ” The horses were “injected and force-fed all manner of illegal and experimental drugs, drugs that allowed the horses to run unnaturally fast and to mask pain,” which can lead to injuries and death, he said. William F. Sweeney Jr.
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, head of the F. B. I. ’s New York office, added, “What actually happened to the horses amounted to nothing less than abuse.
” Horse racing has a long history of trainers’ repurposing drugs in pursuit of a performance edge. Frog and cobra venom, Viagra, cocaine, heart medicines and steroids have all been detected in drug tests. This reliance on performance-enhancing drugs combined with lax state regulations has made American racetracks among the deadliest in the world. Nearly 10 horses a week on average died at U.
S. racetracks in 2018, according to the Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database. That figure is anywhere from two and a half to five times greater than the fatality rate in Europe and Asia, where rules against performance-enhancing drugs are enforced more stringently.
“Servis and Jorge Navarro, whose horses have earned more than $37 million since 2008, were the most prominent trainers named in the indictment.”
Both are based in the Mid-Atlantic and at times conspired to keep their cheating from being detected, according to the indictment. On Feb. 18, 2019, Servis alerted Navarro via text message that a racing official was in the barn area near where they kept the prohibited joint blockers and blood builders that they referred to as “red acid” and “monkey,” the indictment said. On the same day, Navarro was overheard on a call with another defendant, saying that he would otherwise have been caught “pumping and pumping and fuming” every horse that ran that day.
Servis and Maximum Security, who has won eight of his 10 starts and nearly $12 million in purses, have become favorites of horse racing enthusiasts largely because of what many thought was an unjust disqualification in America’s most famous race. The indictment says Maximum Security was given performance-enhancing drugs. On June 5, 2019, Maximum Security was drug-tested at his Monmouth Park barn on the Jersey Shore as Servis was preparing him to run in the Pegasus Stakes. In a phone call intercepted by the authorities with one of his veterinarians, Kristian Rhein, Servis indicated that Maximum Security had received a shot of SGF-1000, a compounded drug aimed to enhance performance, the indictment said.
According to the indictment, Rhein told him not to worry: “They don’t even have a test for it. There’s no test for it in America. ” He also suggested that, if anything, it might trigger a positive for another medication that is allowed. That same day, Servis had another veterinarian falsify the records of Maximum Security to say the colt had received the allowed medication, the indictment charged.
It also accused Navarro and alleged co-conspirators of trying to conceal the existence of the doping program by using false names to ship and receive the drugs. The authorities said Navarro and another defendant worked together to surreptitiously dispose of the bodies of horses that had died, rather than report those deaths to the relevant authorities. The indictment, citing an intercepted phone call last year, quoted Nicholas Surick, a harness trainer charged in the case, as he discussed horses Navarro had “killed and broke down” that Surick said he had made “disappear. ” “You know how much trouble he could get in?
” Surick says, according to the indictment. Lawyers for Navarro and Servis each said their clients would plead not guilty. Lawyers for other defendants named in this article declined comment. Among the defendants charged in the case were seven veterinarians, Berman said at the news conference.
One, Louis Grasso, who was licensed in New York and New Jersey, created and sold customized performance-enhancing drugs and advised others on how to administer them, according to one indictment. In an intercepted phone call in October, a trainer, Thomas Guido III, told Grasso about the death of a horse who Guido had been training who had been doped with a drug used to reduce bleeding in a horse’s lungs during periods of exertion. “It happens,” Grasso responded, adding that Guido “probably over-juiced him. ” “I’ve seen that happen 20 times,” Grasso said.
Sean Piccoli contributed reporting, and Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
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