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Victor Conte, the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) founder, who turned into an anti-doping informant, died from pancreatic cancer on November 3. He was 75.
Conte served time in prison in 2005, having pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute steroids and to money laundering. Conte later operated Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning (SNAC Nutrition), which was not implicated in doping.
Victor Conte, BALCO mastermind behind MLB and track steroids scandal, dead at 75 https://t.co/xdR75Jzoo0 pic.twitter.com/NWgq9yEiit
— New York Post (@nypost) November 4, 2025
The former athlete and musician was accused of supplying a whose who of athletes with steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. They include cyclist Lance Armstrong, MLB player Barry Bonds, sprinters Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Kelli White, Dwain Chambers, and NFL linebacker Bill Romanowski, to name a few.
The musician
Conte attended Fresno City College, but dropped out before graduating. He had initially received a scholarship to Fresno State College as he was a talented runner. Conte played in several bands, eventually playing bass for the Tower of Power during the late 1970s.
Tower of Power put out 26 albums between the mid-1960s and 2023. Conte played for them from 1977 to 1979. They were an R&B and Funk band which had several top-40 hits songs including the highest-charting #11, So Very Hard To Go.
Conte is the cousin of Bruce Conte, a guitarist with Tower of Power for a decade. The band played sessions for many of the top acts of the day. They worked with Aerosmith, Bonnie Raitt, David Sanborn, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Huey Lewis and the News, Little Feat, Heart, Michelle Shocked, Paula Abdul, Aaron Neville, Otis Redding, Santana and Steve Nicks.
The cream and the clear
Conte sold steroids known as “the cream” and “the clear” and advised on their use to dozens of elite athletes.
The company marketed tetrahydrogestrinone (“the Clear”), a then-undetectable steroid developed by chemist Patrick Arnold.
The “cream” developed and sold by BALCO was a testosterone cream. It was a performance-enhancing substance designed to be absorbed through the skin.
The Mitchell Report
Senate leader George Mitchell was hired to investigate the allegations against Conte and BALCO. He wrote a report that implicated many athletes, including baseball all-stars Jason Giambi and Bonds.
“The illegal use of performance-enhancing substances poses a serious threat to the integrity of the game,” the Mitchell report said. “Widespread use by players of such substances unfairly disadvantages the honest athletes who refuse to use them and raises questions about the validity of baseball records.”
Mitchell said the problems didn’t develop overnight. He said everyone involved in baseball in the prior two decades — including commissioners, club officials, the players’ association and players — shared some responsibility for what he called “The Steroids Era.”
The federal investigation into BALCO began with a tax agent digging through the company’s trash.
Conte ended up pleading guilty to two of the 42 charges against him in 2005. Six of the 11 convicted people were caught lying to grand jurors and federal investigators.
The BALCO story led to the book Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports.
