The former owner of a Florida medical clinic who posed as a doctor and illegally supplied steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to professional baseball players and even high-school athletes was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in a federal prison.
Anthony Bosch — who choked back tears in court and said the clinic was a legitimate business gone awry — sought a more lenient term because of his cooperation in an investigation, but US District Judge Darrin Gayles refused.
“This defendant was the most culpable in this conspiracy,” the judge said.
Prosecutors said Bosch could still get his sentence reduced through further cooperation, including potential trial testimony.
Gayles said Bosch falsely held himself out as a licensed medical doctor at his Biogenesis of America clinic, where he accepted thousands of US dollars a month to provide steroid injections to players such as New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers.
Most troubling, Gayles said, was Bosch’s injections of high-school players in the Miami area.
“He was the mastermind,” Gayles said. “He was the one who recruited others to assist him.”
Miami Attorney Wifredo Ferrer issued a statement saying the message of the case is that “cheating doesn’t pay and individuals like Bosch, who distribute performance enhancing drugs to athletes and, more importantly, to our children, will be held accountable for their actions.”
Bosch, 51, pleaded guilty in October last year to conspiracy to distribute testosterone, the sixth person charged in the Biogenesis case to do so. Bosch and Rodriguez are expected to testify if the last two defendants — Rodriguez’s cousin Yuri Sucart and former University of Miami pitching coach Lazaro Collazo — go to trial as scheduled in early April.
The MLB imposed a record season-long suspension last year on Rodriguez, one of 14 players penalized in the scandal. The Yankees say Rodriguez, 39, is no longer their third baseman and will have a chance to earn at-bats as a designated hitter.
MLB spokesman Pat Courtney declined to comment.
A few hours after Bosch’s sentencing, Rodriguez issued a vague handwritten apology to fans saying he wants to “put this chapter behind me and play some ball.”
Bosch, who has been undergoing treatment for cocaine addiction since his guilty plea, was joined by more than two dozen friends and family members at his sentencing hearing.
“I’m ashamed of myself. I’m remorseful,” Bosch said. “I can’t put into words how sorry I am.”
However, Assistant US Attorney Michael Sullivan said that rather than help people with medical problems, Bosch’s main goal was to rake in money by illegally making the athletes “bigger, stronger and faster ballplayers.”
Bosch liked to call himself “Dr T,” according to court records.
“He was not a legitimate doctor. He wasn’t treating an illness. He wasn’t treating a disease,” Sullivan said.
Bosch’s lawyer Guy Lewis, a former US attorney in Miami, said that without his cooperation, the MLB would not have had sufficient evidence to sustain Rodriguez’s suspension.
Lewis said Bosch has met dozens of times with US Drug Enforcement Administration agents and helped prosecutors pore over thousands of pages of documents.
That cooperation, Lewis added, came despite threats from unnamed people warning Bosch to keep his mouth shut, forcing him to hire security personnel and move to several different locations.
Bosch was also offered US$150,000 to flee to Colombia and “lay low,” but he did not, Lewis said.
“Mr Bosch has cooperated thoroughly and extensively,” Lewis said. “He was truthful. He was reliable.”
However, Gayles refused Lewis’ request that Bosch receive a lighter sentence of less than three years.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later