Jorge Navarro

In the case involving high-profile Thoroughbred trainers Jorge Navarro, Jason Servis and more than two dozen others, Standardbred horseman Brandon Simpson has pled guilty to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding conspiracy for his role in a scheme to provide horses with performance-enhancing drugs. What makes the Simpson case unusual is that his guilty plea came some three years after the original charges against Navarro, Servis, et. al. were unsealed and there was no mention of Simpson's name in the indictments released at that time. Court records released this...

[Editor's note: Gary and Mary West are clients of Werk Thoroughbred Consultants, of which Sid Fernando is president and CEO. WTC recommended the 2014 purchase of Maximum Security's dam, Lil Indy, for $80,000 at Keeneland January for the purpose of breeding her to New Year's Day, a stallion owned by the Wests at that time and the sire of Maximum Security.] "Just the facts, ma'am." The iconic line "just the facts, ma'am" is associated with the character of Sgt. Joe Friday from the 1950s cop show "Dragnet" starring actor Jack...

NEW YORK--Standardbred trainer Nick Surick, who has admitted to doping his own horses as well as assisting Jorge Navarro in that trainer's own doping scheme, was sentenced to 62 months in federal prison Thursday by U. S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil in United States District Court, Southern District of New York in lower Manhattan. Among the many defendants in the doping case that have come before Vyskocil, it was one of the longest sentences handed out and two months longer than the 60 months she gave Navarro. Navarro has...

Monday marks an important date for trainer Rick Dutrow and his fight to get back into the sport. It was exactly 10 years ago that he started a horse named Colossal Gift (Songandaprayer) in a claiming race at Aqueduct. Then he was forced to disappear, the result of the New York State Racing and Wagering Board revoking his license for a 10-year period, which has now expired. The regulators acted after Dutrow, always a controversial figure, had a horse he trained, Fastus Cactus (Cactus Ridge), test positive for butorphanol in...

Another eventful year for horse racing is about to come to an end, which makes this a good time to look back at the TDN stories that were the most widely read during the year. From the heroics of Flightline (Tapit) to the on-going saga of the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) to the latest developments in the Jorge Navarro-Jason Servis scandal, there was no shortage of important stories. Unfortunately, there were a number of major stories that reflected poorly on the sport, but, our statistics show, those...

Erica Garcia, a 44-year-old, Florida-based racetrack veterinarian who admitted to injecting purported performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) into horses trained by the now-imprisoned trainer Jorge Navarro over a several-year period in the 2010s decade, was sentenced Monday to two terms of 10 months in prison, which the judge will allow her to serve concurrently. The sentence was the result of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors that dropped one felony charge of distributing misbranded and adulterated drugs in exchange for Garcia admitting her guilt in two "substantive" misdemeanor violations of Food, Drug,...

The barred trainer Jason Servis, the final--and most notoriously prominent--defendant awaiting a trial or sentencing in the 2020 racehorse doping conspiracy scandal, is negotiating with federal prosecutors for a plea bargain agreement to adjudicate the three felony drug misbranding and fraud conspiracy charges he is facing for allegedly drugging almost all the Thoroughbreds under his care in 2019. The disclosure was revealed late Friday afternoon in an otherwise routine court filing asking for an extension of time to file motions in Servis's upcoming trial, which has a Jan. 9 start...

Seven weeks before the start of the final remaining high-profile trial in the federal doping conspiracy case from 2020, the New York-based veterinarian Alexander Chan, whose client list included co-defendant trainer Jason Servis, has changed his mind about having a jury decide his fate on three felony charges for alleged participation in drug adulteration, misbranding, and wire fraud conspiracies. On Thursday, Chan asked for and was swiftly granted a Dec. 5 change-of-plea hearing in United States District Court (Southern District of New York), at which he will likely either plead...

Is the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) good for horsemen and, by extension, good for racing? Representing the National HBPA, lawyer Peter Ecabert doesn't think that it is, and he was invited to join the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland to explain why. Ecabert was one of two guests on this week's podcast as Len Green, the founder and chairman of the Green Group, came on to share some tax advice and to talk about his soon-to-be-named champion 2-year-old filly Wonder Wheel (Into Mischief). When asked...

The barred Thoroughbred trainer Michael Tannuzzo, 50, was sentenced to 27 months in a federal prison on Monday as part of plea agreement in which he had previously copped guilty to one felony count of drug adulteration and misbranding with the intent to defraud or mislead. Tannuzzo, a native of Brooklyn and Queens who had 11 horses racing at Aqueduct at the time of his Mar. 9, 2020, arrest, made headlines 24 hours later by steadfastly declaring his innocence and maintaining that the New York State Gaming Commission shouldn't have...

The National HBPA and its affiliates got their wish Friday. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) is unconstitutional. As a result, HISA is on life support and very well could be finished. Within hours of the decision being announced, the National HBPA was taking a victory lap, declaring that this was a win for horsemen across the country. "Today's ruling shows the HISA regulations are not in the best interest of thoroughbred racing's participants and, as...

Lisa Giannelli was sentenced Sept. 8 to 3 1/2 years in prison as part of the federal government's sweeping investigation into horse doping at race tracks across the country. Giannelli, 56, was found guilty of peddling illegal performance-enhancing drugs to trainers to dope horses and faced a maximum of five years in prison. Her lawyers appealed for a no-jail sentence of probation. "This was not a one-time thing," Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil said in U.S. District Court in New York. "For 18 years, Ms. Giannelli marketed and sold what she...