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Tag: alex rodriguez
Clinic Operator Suspected Of Selling Steroids To Plead Guilty In October
September 03, 2014
By Jay Weaver, The Miami Herald
MIAMI — Anthony Bosch, the South Florida clinic operator suspected of selling banned steroids to suspended Major League Baseball players, plans to plead guilty in October to illegally distributing the performance enhancement drugs.
“We’ve resolved the case,” Bosch’s defense attorney, Guy Lewis, told U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles on Wednesday in Miami federal court. “It’s going to be resolved with a (guilty) plea.”
Bosch, who initially pleaded not guilty after he surrendered last month, has signed a plea agreement admitting to his criminal activity at a Coral Gables, Florida, anti-aging clinic that allegedly sold testosterone to New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez and other players. He was scheduled for trial on Monday, but the agreement precludes it.
Bosch said nothing during Wednesday’s pre-trial hearing. Afterward, Lewis declined to comment on why his client — a notorious figure in baseball — decided to change his plea to guilty.
Bosch, accused of selling more than 5,000 units of testosterone to both professional and high school ballplayers, faces up to 10 years in prison, according to the plea agreement. He has agreed to assist the Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. attorney’s office in the investigation, which could help him obtain a significantly lesser sentence.
Last month, Bosch and six other defendants were arrested on charges of conspiring to sell the illegal steroids — one year after more than a dozen Major League Baseball players were suspended in connection with the clinic probe, including Rodriguez. The arrests marked the climax of the biggest doping scandal in baseball history.
The six defendants, including Rodriguez’s cousin, are accused of conspiring with Bosch to distribute the steroids supplied by his clinic between 2008 and 2013. Bosch, who led some people to believe he was a licensed medical doctor, is the former owner of the Biogenesis of America clinic in Coral Gables.
In recently filed court papers, the U.S. attorney’s office revealed that 122 electronic surveillance recordings — audio and video — were made of Bosch and the other defendants during the federal investigation. It gained momentum early last year after the Miami New Times broke the story about Bosch’s alleged sale of steroids to Major League ballplayers and others.
None of Bosch’s customers have been charged in the federal case.
The federal investigation is shrouded in secrecy. Prosecutors Pat Sullivan and Sharad Motiani and defense attorneys Lewis and Susy Elena Ribero-Ayala have agreed that no evidence — including the names of customers — can be shared with outside parties, including Major League Baseball. The clinic’s customers also included Miami-Dade high school ballplayers.
Gayles, the federal judge, has granted a protective order restricting the sharing of the evidence.
Photo: Walter Michot/Miami Herald/MCT
The Story A-Rod Would Love To Tell
January 21, 2014
An absolutely true news item: New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez was suspended for one season for routinely using banned substances, including injectable growth hormones, skin creams and testosterone lozenges that Rodriguez called “gummies.”
——
As I’ve said all along, I’m totally innocent. I don’t use performance-enhancing drugs, period.
And I would never, ever put a strange-looking lozenge under my tongue before a big game. Anybody who knows me will tell you that I’m terrified of lozenges.
Here’s what happened: One day I fly down to Coral Gables to buy some hummus from my favorite hummus shop, and I see this place called “Biogenesis of America.”
The sign outside says “anti-aging clinic,” so I decide to check it out.
Not because my batting average was slipping, my knees hurt and I was afraid of getting too old to play the game. No way!
The only reason I go into the place was for skincare products, OK? Because when a player is getting paid $25 million a year and he’s missing lots of games (not to mention curveballs), the least he can do for his fans is to show up with a flawless complexion.
So I find my special almond-milk hydrating cream on the shelf and I’m standing in line to pay when some dude walks up and introduces himself as Dr. Tony Bosch. Turns out he’s a huge Yankees fan, and we hit it off.
He takes me into his private office and offers to set me up with a comprehensive daily moisturizing program — shots, creams and pills.
“Your skin will be glowing twenty-four-seven!” Dr. Bosch promises, which sounds great to me because when my pores feel good, my whole body feels good.
And when my body feels good, I can hit a slider with my eyes closed.
But still I’m cautious because I’d been burned before.
Back when I played for the Rangers I took a ton of steroids and later I lied about it to everyone, including Katie Couric, who wouldn’t even have a drink with me later.
Her loss, by the way.
Still I got in big trouble with the league, and to play ball again I had to promise to stay clean.
That’s why I cross-examine Dr. Bosch before buying any of his skin products. “Hey, dude,” I say, “this stuff isn’t full of hormones or ‘roids, is it? Because I am never, ever taking performance-enhancing drugs again!”
“Chill out, A-Rod,” he says. “Do I seem like the sort of guy who would peddle banned substances to professional athletes? Does this look like the type of establishment involved in black-market activities?”
And I’m thinking, he’s absolutely right. What am I so worried about? After all, this is South Florida, the last place you’d ever expect to find a fake doctor running a fake anti-aging clinic.
Only, guess what? The joint shut down and it turned out Bosch was totally bogus, even his white lab coat.
And now he’s telling everyone that I paid him thousands in cash to get all juiced up on testosterone and HGH, which is ridiculous.
(OK, it might be true that in 2012 Bosch and I spoke 53 times on the phone and exchanged 556 text messages, but my skin was super dry that year so I kept running out of his special moisturizer.)
There’s way more that I’d love to tell, but for now my lawyers want me to be quiet while they sue people.
If the Yankees think they’re finally rid of me and my humongous salary, they’re wrong. I fully expect my suspension from baseball to be reversed, and I’m eagerly preparing for spring training and an All-Star, lozenge-free season.
I got a line on some powdered rhino horn, which I grind up and sprinkle in my hummus every day for breakfast.
Next I tape a Viagra pill in each of my armpits and go straight to the gym, where I work up an amazing sweat.
Lunch is a shark-fin smoothie followed by a complete transfusion (there’s a kid who hit .348 in Triple-A last year, a big fan. He swaps blood with me.)
And each night, before bed, I slather myself head-to-toe with a totally organic cream made from aloe leaves, fresh kale, mint shavings and bull testicles.
Anybody asks, you tell them to forget all the bad things they’ve heard about A-Rod. I’m an all-natural man who leads a clean, all-natural life.
Check out my pores if you don’t believe me.
(Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for The Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132.)
AFP Photo/Jonathan Daniel
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