Jorge Navarro

Florida-based trainer Alfredo Lichoa is among five people who have been arrested afer a money-laundering investigation that was conducted by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the same agency that has indicted 27 people as part of a horse-doping ring. Lichoa and the others were arrested Mar. 9, the same day the FBI rounded up Jason Servis, Jorge Navarro and 25 others indicted for their alleged role in treating racehorses with performance-enhancing drugs. The money-laundering story was first reported by Paulick Report. Lichoa, a native of...

The Week in Review They have come at us one by one, saying they are shocked, they are disgusted, they love the animal, they love the sport and they had no idea they had been employing drug cheats. That's what we have heard from the owners who employed Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro and have spoken up in the aftermath of indictments that are not only shocking but threaten to do severe and irreparable damage to the sport. How could an owner employ someone who performed training feats that were,...

All horses who were under the custody of trainers named in the federal indictment earlier this week will undergo a mandatory minimum of a 60-day stand-down period and are prohibited from racing at any Stronach Group racing facility during that time, The Stronach Group announced Thursday. "Our goal is to keep these horses safe and from competing if there is any possibility that they may have performance- enhancing drugs in their system," said Dr. Dionne Benson, Chief Veterinarian, The Stronach Group. "This is being done, not only to first and...

What an awful way to start the week. Sandwiched between a chaotic stock market and the spread of coronavirus, the racing industry got word Monday of a tawdry racehorse doping scandal that came packaged in four indictments against 27 defendants. These schemes were replete with instances of gutter-level language from wire taps that painted the treatment of some of these horses as nothing more than disposable money-making commodities. The 27 individuals included some trainers and veterinarians. They were charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New...

The TDN Writer's Room podcast, presented each week by Keeneland, pulled no punches as the writers covered all aspects of the indictments for horse doping of 27 people announced Monday by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. The dialogue included a combination of passion, anger and bewilderment on a story that has rocked the industry. "The big shock is not the scandal itself. The big shock is not that these guys were drugging horses and cheating," said Joe Bianca who kicked off the News of...

Of course, the podcast conversation this week focuses on the doping scandal sweeping racing, and trainer Tom Morley joins the conversation to talk about the trainers whose lives have been affected by those now accused by the U.S. Attorney's Office of doping their horses. It's one for the ages, on the TDN podcast.

The FBI and the Department of Justice have done what the horse racing industry had failed to do for decades. They caught and are prosecuting high-profile trainers for doping infractions as part of an investigation that has finally torn the lid off of what had been the shadowy and secretive world inhabited by racing's cheaters. The entire industry owes a debt of gratitude to these agencies. The problem is, it's not the FBI's job to clean up horse racing. It has more important matters to deal with. There may be...

Trainers Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis, the two biggest names among the 27 people indicted Monday after an investigation into horse doping, are due back in court Mar. 23 for their arraignment. Both were arrested Monday in Miami and released on bail. As part of the bail agreement, the court imposed the requirement that Servis and Navarro not have any contact with racehorses without the presence of the third party owner of the premises where the horse is stabled. The indicted horsemen will be allowed to enter a guilty or...

Following a tweet from Rockingham Ranch owner Gary Hartunian that he was sending the horses he had with Jorge Navarro to trainer Brad Cox, Cox told the TDN that he would not be accepting the horses. "It's not true," Cox said of Hartunians's tweet. "After everything that has been going on the last day and a half, I don't feel comfortable accepting any of the horses that are involved in this situation." Cox's statement came after Hartunian tweeted the following Tuesday morning: "All of my horses with Jorge are being...

The Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's March Sale of 2-Year-Olds in Training will continue as scheduled, OBS Director of Sales Tod Wojciechowski told the TDN Tuesday. The decision comes as organizers and administrators for institutions and events around the world grapple with just how seriously to take the Coronavirus outbreak. "We're monitoring the situation, but we are moving forward with the sale," Wojciechowski said. "There have been no restrictions placed on us by a government agency--it's a fluid situation, but right now with the investment that's at stake for our consignors...

Trainers Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis have both racked up well-above-norm winning ratios of 29% since 2017, and no Thoroughbred horseman in this day and age can sustain such gaudy numbers without inviting allegations of cheating via illegal horse doping. Monday, those suspicions exploded beyond the boundaries of our sport when four unsealed federal indictments implicated 27 individuals in a "widespread, corrupt scheme" dating to at least 2017 that centers on Navarro, Servis, and a vast network of co-conspirators who allegedly manufactured, mislabeled, rebranded, distributed and administered performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs)...

The latest bombshell to hit the racing industry was dropped Monday morning, when 27 individuals--including trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro--were named in four separate indictments alleging that they had engaged in a "widespread, corrupt scheme by racehorse trainers, veterinarians, PED distributors and others to manufacture, distribute, and receive adulterated and misbranded PEDs and to secretly administer those PEDs to racehorses under scheme participants' control." The indictments list a number of illegal performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) that the 27 individuals allegedly manufactured, distributed and used. They include erythropoietin (EPO)--a hormone...