Guilty Plea Widens Baseball’s Steroids Scandal
Guilty Plea Widens Baseball’s Steroids Scandal
By JULIET MACUR
Published: April 28, 2007
A former Mets clubhouse assistant pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court in San Francisco to distributing performance-enhancing drugs to dozens of former and current Major League Baseball players for a 10-year period, the latest blow to a sport that has been battered by the issue of steroid use.
Kirk Radomski, 37, who worked as a bat boy, equipment manager and clubhouse assistant for the Mets from 1985-95, admitted to selling banned drugs, including anabolic steroids, amphetamines and human growth hormone, from 1995 through 2005, according to a plea agreement filed in the United States District Court in the Northern District of California. Mr. Radomski, who listed himself as a personal trainer on recent tax returns, also pleaded guilty to laundering the money from the drug transactions. The two felony charges carry sentences of up to 25 years in prison and a maximum of $500,000 in fines.
None of his clients were named in the plea agreement, and players’ names were redacted from a search warrant affidavit dated Dec. 13, 2005, which was used for a federal raid on Mr. Radomski’s Long Island home.
Mr. Radomski has been working with federal steroids investigators since that raid, according to Matt Parrella, an assistant United States attorney. Assisting those investigations typically includes providing background information, going undercover, recording telephone conversations and setting up transactions that are monitored by authorities.
Mr. Parrella is part of the United States Attorney’s office that prosecuted the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative steroid-distribution case, in which a number of baseball players, including Barry Bonds, testified before a grand jury because of suspected steroid use.
None of those players have been indicted, but Mr. Bonds is still being investigated in the case even as he draws closer to Hank Aaron’s career home run record. Mr. Bonds’s pursuit has created an uncomfortable position for Major League Baseball, and yesterday’s revelations created a new set of problems regarding performance-enhancing drugs.
The search warrant affidavit in Mr. Radomski’s case described how his drug distribution worked. Although the names of his clients were blackened out in the affidavit, it said that Mr. Radomski had been distributing performance-enhancing drugs to professional baseball players, including at least one major league player “who was publicly identified as being associated with Balco Laboratories.”
In a telephone interview yesterday, Bonds’s criminal defense lawyer, Michael Rains, said: “As of now, I have not heard anything about this. I have never heard this guy’s name. This has nothing to with Barry.”
Jeff Novitzky, the lead investigator in the Balco case, signed the affidavit, which outlined how a tip was first received from an F.B.I. informant in February 2005 about someone in New York distributing steroids. The subsequent federal criminal grand jury investigation unfolded as Congress intensified its pressure on Major League Baseball over steroid use among players.
A week before Commissioner Bud Selig and several star players testified before a Congressional committee in March 2005, the F.B.I. informant placed a call to his major league baseball source to inquire about getting steroids, according to the affidavit.
Mr. Selig and Donald Fehr, the executive director of the players association, testified before the Congressional hearing on March 17 and defended baseball’s policies. Mr. Selig told the committee that the steroid problem in baseball had been blown out of proportion.
“Do we have a major problem? No,” he said.
According to the affidavit, two days after the Congressional hearing, on March 19, the source told the F.B.I. that his contact in major league baseball “had placed an order with his ‘New York contact.’ ” The next day, the source received a package containing “two full vials, labeled testosterone and deca-durabolin respectively, along with ten syringes.”
Mr. Radomski’s statement in his plea agreement painted a sweeping portrait of drug distribution in the heart of the sport.
“During my past employment in Major League Baseball I developed contacts with Major League Baseball players throughout the country to whom I subsequently distributed anabolic steroids and athletic performance-enhancing drugs,” Mr. Radomski said.
“I had personal contact with some of my baseball drug clients, but consulted and conducted drug transactions with others over the telephone and mail.”
Mr. Radomski also agreed to cooperate with federal investigators and nongovernmental investigators, which includes a continuing investigation into steroid use in baseball that is now being conducted by former Senator George J. Mitchell.
Travis Tygart, the senior managing director and general counsel for the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said, “If you’re a player that was using and receiving steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs from Radomski, I think you are pretty nervous right now.”
Mr. Radomski’s home was searched on Dec. 14, 2005, and the federal search warrant affidavit filed in connection with that raid detailed some of his drug transactions. In that raid, federal agents seized “thousands of doses of numerous types of anabolic steroids in both pill and injectable form,” according to a statement from United States Attorney Scott N. Schools, who recently replaced Kevin Ryan, who had overseen the original prosecution of the Balco case.
Obtained in the raid of Mr. Radomski’s home were human growth hormone; insulin growth factor; clomiphene, a fertility drug that can be used as a masking agent; and the steroid Clenbuterol, which was the same drug that the journeyman pitcher Jason Grimsley admitted to using in the search warrant affidavit on his home in Arizona last year.
Federal agents also seized shipping records, financial records, correspondences and contact lists that detailed the distribution of drugs to major league baseball players.
According to the affidavit, an F.B.I. informant set up five transactions with Mr. Radomski, through a mutual acquaintance in baseball. During one conversation between the informant and that baseball source, the source said that if a professional baseball player was currently using performance-enhancing drugs, “then that player likely would be getting it from Kirk Radomski.” The baseball source also called Radomski a “major drug source in professional baseball, who took over after the Balco Laboratories individuals were taken down,” in 2003.
According to the affidavit, Mr. Radomski had accepted personal checks from his clients, but often cashed them instead of depositing them in his account, where they would leave a paper trail. The affidavit listed 23 check transactions with names of current and former Major League Baseball players and their affiliates. Those checks ranged from $200 to $3,500.
Mr. Novitzky wrote that Mr. Radomski was running a cash business, for the most part.
Mr. Radomski’s financial records from 2003 to 2005 were analyzed. Major League Baseball did not have a steroid testing policy until 2003 and did not suspend any players for a positive test until 2005. Since then, 15 major leaguers have been suspended for violating the drug policy.
Major League Baseball issued a statement saying it supported “the efforts of the U.S. attorney’s office in combating the illegal use of performance-enhancing substances.”
The statement also said that baseball was “encouraged” that prosecutors were insisting that Radomski cooperate with Mr. Mitchell’s investigation.
That cooperation could give Mr. Mitchell the teeth he has seemed to lack since agreeing in March 2006 to head the investigation on behalf of Mr. Selig.
Mr. Mitchell does not have subpoena power and has struggled to get current and former baseball employees to describe what they know about steroid use.
The Mets issued a statement saying the team was “disappointed” to hear about the guilty plea and that “the conduct in question is diametrically opposed to the values and standards of the Mets organization and our owners.”
Jack Curry, Ben Shpigel and Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
By JULIET MACUR
Published: April 28, 2007
A former Mets clubhouse assistant pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court in San Francisco to distributing performance-enhancing drugs to dozens of former and current Major League Baseball players for a 10-year period, the latest blow to a sport that has been battered by the issue of steroid use.
Kirk Radomski, 37, who worked as a bat boy, equipment manager and clubhouse assistant for the Mets from 1985-95, admitted to selling banned drugs, including anabolic steroids, amphetamines and human growth hormone, from 1995 through 2005, according to a plea agreement filed in the United States District Court in the Northern District of California. Mr. Radomski, who listed himself as a personal trainer on recent tax returns, also pleaded guilty to laundering the money from the drug transactions. The two felony charges carry sentences of up to 25 years in prison and a maximum of $500,000 in fines.
None of his clients were named in the plea agreement, and players’ names were redacted from a search warrant affidavit dated Dec. 13, 2005, which was used for a federal raid on Mr. Radomski’s Long Island home.
Mr. Radomski has been working with federal steroids investigators since that raid, according to Matt Parrella, an assistant United States attorney. Assisting those investigations typically includes providing background information, going undercover, recording telephone conversations and setting up transactions that are monitored by authorities.
Mr. Parrella is part of the United States Attorney’s office that prosecuted the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative steroid-distribution case, in which a number of baseball players, including Barry Bonds, testified before a grand jury because of suspected steroid use.
None of those players have been indicted, but Mr. Bonds is still being investigated in the case even as he draws closer to Hank Aaron’s career home run record. Mr. Bonds’s pursuit has created an uncomfortable position for Major League Baseball, and yesterday’s revelations created a new set of problems regarding performance-enhancing drugs.
The search warrant affidavit in Mr. Radomski’s case described how his drug distribution worked. Although the names of his clients were blackened out in the affidavit, it said that Mr. Radomski had been distributing performance-enhancing drugs to professional baseball players, including at least one major league player “who was publicly identified as being associated with Balco Laboratories.”
In a telephone interview yesterday, Bonds’s criminal defense lawyer, Michael Rains, said: “As of now, I have not heard anything about this. I have never heard this guy’s name. This has nothing to with Barry.”
Jeff Novitzky, the lead investigator in the Balco case, signed the affidavit, which outlined how a tip was first received from an F.B.I. informant in February 2005 about someone in New York distributing steroids. The subsequent federal criminal grand jury investigation unfolded as Congress intensified its pressure on Major League Baseball over steroid use among players.
A week before Commissioner Bud Selig and several star players testified before a Congressional committee in March 2005, the F.B.I. informant placed a call to his major league baseball source to inquire about getting steroids, according to the affidavit.
Mr. Selig and Donald Fehr, the executive director of the players association, testified before the Congressional hearing on March 17 and defended baseball’s policies. Mr. Selig told the committee that the steroid problem in baseball had been blown out of proportion.
“Do we have a major problem? No,” he said.
According to the affidavit, two days after the Congressional hearing, on March 19, the source told the F.B.I. that his contact in major league baseball “had placed an order with his ‘New York contact.’ ” The next day, the source received a package containing “two full vials, labeled testosterone and deca-durabolin respectively, along with ten syringes.”
Mr. Radomski’s statement in his plea agreement painted a sweeping portrait of drug distribution in the heart of the sport.
“During my past employment in Major League Baseball I developed contacts with Major League Baseball players throughout the country to whom I subsequently distributed anabolic steroids and athletic performance-enhancing drugs,” Mr. Radomski said.
“I had personal contact with some of my baseball drug clients, but consulted and conducted drug transactions with others over the telephone and mail.”
Mr. Radomski also agreed to cooperate with federal investigators and nongovernmental investigators, which includes a continuing investigation into steroid use in baseball that is now being conducted by former Senator George J. Mitchell.
Travis Tygart, the senior managing director and general counsel for the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said, “If you’re a player that was using and receiving steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs from Radomski, I think you are pretty nervous right now.”
Mr. Radomski’s home was searched on Dec. 14, 2005, and the federal search warrant affidavit filed in connection with that raid detailed some of his drug transactions. In that raid, federal agents seized “thousands of doses of numerous types of anabolic steroids in both pill and injectable form,” according to a statement from United States Attorney Scott N. Schools, who recently replaced Kevin Ryan, who had overseen the original prosecution of the Balco case.
Obtained in the raid of Mr. Radomski’s home were human growth hormone; insulin growth factor; clomiphene, a fertility drug that can be used as a masking agent; and the steroid Clenbuterol, which was the same drug that the journeyman pitcher Jason Grimsley admitted to using in the search warrant affidavit on his home in Arizona last year.
Federal agents also seized shipping records, financial records, correspondences and contact lists that detailed the distribution of drugs to major league baseball players.
According to the affidavit, an F.B.I. informant set up five transactions with Mr. Radomski, through a mutual acquaintance in baseball. During one conversation between the informant and that baseball source, the source said that if a professional baseball player was currently using performance-enhancing drugs, “then that player likely would be getting it from Kirk Radomski.” The baseball source also called Radomski a “major drug source in professional baseball, who took over after the Balco Laboratories individuals were taken down,” in 2003.
According to the affidavit, Mr. Radomski had accepted personal checks from his clients, but often cashed them instead of depositing them in his account, where they would leave a paper trail. The affidavit listed 23 check transactions with names of current and former Major League Baseball players and their affiliates. Those checks ranged from $200 to $3,500.
Mr. Novitzky wrote that Mr. Radomski was running a cash business, for the most part.
Mr. Radomski’s financial records from 2003 to 2005 were analyzed. Major League Baseball did not have a steroid testing policy until 2003 and did not suspend any players for a positive test until 2005. Since then, 15 major leaguers have been suspended for violating the drug policy.
Major League Baseball issued a statement saying it supported “the efforts of the U.S. attorney’s office in combating the illegal use of performance-enhancing substances.”
The statement also said that baseball was “encouraged” that prosecutors were insisting that Radomski cooperate with Mr. Mitchell’s investigation.
That cooperation could give Mr. Mitchell the teeth he has seemed to lack since agreeing in March 2006 to head the investigation on behalf of Mr. Selig.
Mr. Mitchell does not have subpoena power and has struggled to get current and former baseball employees to describe what they know about steroid use.
The Mets issued a statement saying the team was “disappointed” to hear about the guilty plea and that “the conduct in question is diametrically opposed to the values and standards of the Mets organization and our owners.”
Jack Curry, Ben Shpigel and Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
posted by Walking Contradiction at 4/29/2007 11:21:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home