Jason Servis

A New York jury heard a full day of testimony Jan. 21 in the horse doping trial of Dr. Seth Fishman and Lisa Giannelli. The entire morning and most of the afternoon featured a second day of testimony from a woman who worked for Fishman at his Florida business Equestology for five years. Courtney Adams, 34, testifying from Florida via video conference, told jurors that Fishman and Equestology were all about "testability." That meant creating "product" that couldn't be detected in post-race testing by horse racing authorities, she said. During...

A New York federal jury heard opening statements Jan. 20 as the horse doping conspiracy trial of Dr. Seth Fishman and Lisa Giannelli got underway. Prosecutor Anden Chow began by telling jurors that the defendants had operated a black market drug conspiracy for two decades. He said Fishman and Giannelli created hundreds of drugs that were used to secretly dope race horses. The drugs they produced were undetectable in post-racing testing, Chow said, so that trainers who were their customers could increase their chances of winning races by committing fraud....

The Jan. 19 selection of jurors for the federal horse-doping trial of Dr. Seth Fishman and Lisa Giannelli was extended into at least a second day when only 37 of 75 potential jurors were questioned inside a lower Manhattan courthouse. U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil called for an end to the marathon nine-hour session at about 6 p.m. ET, ordering the jurors who had yet to be interviewed to return to the same Southern District of New York court by 9:30 a.m. Jan. 20. The interview process consisted...

An attorney who has been in the headlines for defending high-profile clients such as the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted NXIVM "sex cult" leader Keith Raniere, and the convicted Mexican drug lord and murderer Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera on Monday got added to the legal team for Seth Fishman, the indicted Florida veterinarian whose trial in the nationwide racehorse doping conspiracy case begins Jan. 19. The New York-based lawyer Marc Fernich, who has extensive experience defending clients in the United States District Court (Southern District of New York)...

Michael Kegley, Jr., the former sales director for the company that sold the purportedly performance-enhancing drug (PED) SGF-1000 that is at the heart of a years-long investigation of an international racehorse doping conspiracy, got sentenced to 30 months in prison on Thursday. Kegley, 41, had pleaded guilty in July 2021 to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding. He had admitted in open court at that time that as sales director for the Kentucky-based MediVet Equine, he sold SGF-1000 and other products to trainers and veterinarians, knowing that there was...

Kristian Rhein, a suspended veterinarian formerly based at Belmont Park who was caught on a wiretap bragging that he sold "assloads" of SGF-1000 to racehorse trainers, was sentenced to three years imprisonment Wednesday after pleading guilty to one felony charge within the federal government's sprawling prosecution of an allegedly years-long conspiracy to dope racehorses. Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil imposed the maximum-allowable prison term under federal sentencing guidelines Jan. 5 in United States District Court (Southern District of New York). According to the court order filed in conjunction with his sentencing,...

Federal prosecutors and the legal team for Seth Fishman continue to spar over allegations by the government that the indicted Florida veterinarian should have his bail revoked for allegedly still selling purportedly performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) while awaiting trial in the international racehorse doping conspiracy case. The latest legal salvo, fired Dec. 17 by prosecutors in the form of a letter, comes three days before Fishman's Dec. 20 bail revocation hearing in United States District Court (Southern District of New York). This latest plot twist in the case began Dec. 6,...

The judge in the federal doping conspiracy case used words like "frivolous" and "weak" to swat away motions made by seven defendants to suppress wiretap and other electronic evidence in trails that are expected to commence in 2022. The opinion and order filed Dec. 8 by Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil in United States District Court (Southern District of New York) follows a verbal ruling she made Nov. 4 during a status conference that denied all of the related motions made during the late summer by Jason Servis, Seth Fishman, Lisa...

The government has recommended a three-year prison sentence for Kristian Rhein, the veterinarian embroiled in the MediVet Equine practice that marketed and sold "an adulterated and misbranded performance-enhancing drug," they revealed in papers filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court. Rhein was one of 27 people charged in a widespread doping scheme of Thoroughbred racehorses on Mar. 9, 2020 that included trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro. United States Attorney Damian Williams, in papers filed with Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil in her court in the Southern District of New York, wrote,...

This past summer, Michael Kegley Jr. and Kristian Rhein both pled guilty to felony drug adulteration and misbranding charges in the alleged international Thoroughbred doping conspiracy case. That means they'll avoid trials prior to their sentencings. But it doesn't mean that the voluminous cache of evidence that prosecutors would have used against them won't ever see the light of day. In fact, just last week, the feds disclosed intriguing documentation about SGF-1000, the adulterated and misbranded purportedly performance-enhancing drug (PED) that was an elixir of choice for now-barred trainer Jorge...

We heard from the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), its CEO Travis Tygart and the Director of Equine Science Dr. Tessa Muir last week when USADA released its anti-doping guidelines, rules and protocols. Once again, we saw that these are no-nonsense, dedicated people with a track record of cleaning up other sports. The release of the guidelines was an important step toward what will be a welcome change for racing--competent, dedicated policing from an outside entity replacing the current system, which just doesn't work. (Quotes from this story were taken...

In the wake of nine defendants in the alleged nationwide horse-doping conspiracy case having changed their pleas to "guilty" in recent months, a Nov. 4 status hearing reset the trial groupings for the remaining defendants, with those trials all now anticipated to commence in the first half of 2022. Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil of United States District Court (Southern District of New York) also ordered that all remaining motions to suppress evidence that are pending on the docket are to be considered denied, noting that her written opinion on that...