Jason Servis

Jorge Navarro, the self-proclaimed "Juice Man" and a central figure in the doping scandal that rocked the sport in 2020, was released Wednesday from the federal prison FCI Miami, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator website. On December 17, 2021, Navarro was handed a five-year sentence for his leading role in the felony drug misbranding and adulteration charges arising from an investigation that involved the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York. He began serving his sentence on March 18, 2022. Had he...

The name of the book recently released by Simon & Schuster is "Death of a Racehorse," which might lead one to believe that author and CNN Reporter Katie Bo Lillis is the latest to jump on the anti-racing bandwagon. That is not the case. This is a book that truly can't be judged by its macabre cover or title. It's not that Lillis is a cheerleader for racing. A graduate of the Godolphin Flying Start program, she clearly understands the sport and seems pained by what ails it--breakdowns, overuse of...

Lexington, KY--The final day of the Organization of Racing Investigators (ORI) Training Conference at Keeneland escalated the focus on enforcement and how investigators can broaden their expertise. Though participants regularly receive training at home, the ORI sessions offer equine knowledge that is highly specialized which can be taken back to their own jurisdictions and applied. Mike Singletary, vice president of security for the Maryland Jockey Club, said when his team walks the shedrow at Pimlico or Laurel being cognizant of your surroundings takes time and effort to hone. "Information is...

On March 3, 2019, Happy Farm (Ghostzapper) was claimed by trainer Jason Servis for $30,000 at Aqueduct. The dark bay gelding would remain in that barn for an entire year where he'd go on to finish no worse than second in seven starts - highlighted by a victory in the 2019 GIII Fall Highweight Handicap. Within days of Happy Farm's second-place finish in the GIII Tom Fool Handicap on March 7, 2020, Servis was arrested and charged following a multi-year investigation overseen by the FBI that identified over 30 people...

Maximum Security (New Year's Day) has been disqualified from his victory in the inaugural $20-million Saudi Cup and Midnight Bisou (Midnight Lute) has been promoted to first, the stewards committee of the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia (JCSA) announced on Friday. The change in finishing order of the Feb. 29, 2020 race was the result of an inquiry into the charges brought by the JCSA against Maximum Security's trainer Jason Servis, who is currently serving a four-year prison sentence for doping horses under his care. The inquiry took place on...

The much-anticipated documentary "The New York Times Presents: "Broken Horses" will debut on the FX Network Friday at 10 p.m ET and will begin streaming on Hulu next day. What follows is a review of the documentary. You probably haven't seen the FX documentary "The New York Times Presents: "Broken Horses" yet, but, then again, you have. Be it from 60 Minutes, HBO's Real Sports, the Washington Post or in the pages of the New York Times, the story of horse racing's problems has been told numerous times. It's not...

Nearly four years after Maximum Security (New Year's Day) crossed the wire first in the inaugural Saudi Cup and six months after his trainer Jason Servis was given a four-year prison sentence for doping horses under his care, the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia (JCSA) announced Tuesday that it has concluded its own investigation into the matter and will recommend to a Stewards Committee that it should sanction Servis and disqualify Maximum Security. The final decision will be made by the Stewards Committee, but in the press release it issued...

Henry Argueta, formerly the assistant to the now-imprisoned trainer Jason Servis, was sentenced to a prison term of "time served" and two years of supervised release after working out a cooperative plea bargain with prosecutors in the wide-ranging 2020 racehorse doping conspiracy case that has already netted several dozen convictions. The sentencing paperwork filed Dec. 21 for Argueta's final judgment in United States District Court (Southern District of New York) stated that he pleaded guilty to three felony charges listed in a superseding information document in exchange for other charges...

The former New York-based veterinarian Alexander Chan has filed a hand-written plea from prison asking for a reduction to his 30-month sentence that was handed down in May as punishment for his role in the wide-ranging 2020 racehorse doping conspiracy case. In December 2022, Chan had cut a deal with prosecutors that involved pleading guilty to a single felony charge of drug adulteration and misbranding in exchange for two other felony counts against him being dropped. Chan's filing with the court on Monday was submitted without an attorney acting on...

After the venerable and influential news show 60 Minutes aired a piece on horse racing last week, people within the industry were understandably upset. The story was ugly, filled with graphic and grisly coverage of horses breaking down, and portrayed racing as a sport where drugs, corruption and horse fatalities had reached the point of being out of control. "Horse racing is an industry where extremely devoted people labor because of one common thing: we all love horses, especially thoroughbred horses," Denali Stud's Craig Bandoroff wrote to 60 Minutes. "That...

The CBS news program "60 Minutes," which aired Sunday evening included a segment that covered horse racing's worst problems, horses breaking down and dying and the use of performance-enhancing drugs on horses. 60 Minutes often reaches as many as 12 million viewers. The segment was hosted by correspondent Cecilia Vega. Though the program gave ample time to Jockey Club Chairman Stuart Janney III, Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority CEO Lisa Lazarus, Meadowlands owner Jeff Gural, and others who have been working to solve the problems, it left no doubt that...

Home for Jason Servis for the next four years will be Federal Prison Camp Pensacola. Sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to using banned, performance-enhancing drugs on his horses, Servis reported to the Florida prison Wednesday. The prison is 175 miles west of Tallahassee, opened in 1988 and has a population of about 460 inmates. Notable residents included disgraced former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, Congressman Chris Collins and Billy Walters, a professional sports gambler convicted of insider trading. But FPC Pensacola, a minimum-security facility, is, perhaps, best...