Thoroughbred racehorse trainer Jason Servis was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison for his part in a long-running horse doping scheme. Mr. Servis, 66, is known for being the trainer of Maximum Security, the horse that finished first in the 2019 Kentucky Derby but was disqualified from the win after a replay of the race video showed Maximum Security edging out of his lane and blocking another horse from advancing. Maximum Security was among the horses that received performance-enhancing drugs, according to investigators.
Professional horse racing is a $100 billion global industry. Racehorses can sell for over $1 million and compete for purses worth millions of dollars. The industry is highly regulated, including monitoring for drugs to protect the health of horses and to ensure fair competition between competitors, and the betting public, an indictment in the case said.
In March 2020, Servis was one of over 30 defendants charged in four cases that came from a multi-year investigation of the abuse of racehorses through the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Hundreds of Bottles of Drugs
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation New York Field Office’s Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force with help from the FBI’s Integrity in Sports and Gaming Initiative, the Food and Drug Administration and Customs and Border Protection.
“By evading performance-enhancing drug prohibitions and deceiving regulators and horse racing officials, participants in these schemes sought to improve race performance and obtain prize money from racetracks throughout the United States and other countries, including in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Kentucky, and Saudi Arabia, all to the detriment and risk of the health and well-being of the racehorses,” the statement from Mr. Williams said. “Trainers who participated in the schemes, like Servis, stood to profit from the success of racehorses under their control by earning a share of their horses’ winnings and by improving their horses’ racing records, thereby yielding higher trainer fees and increasing the number of racehorses under their control.”
Officials say Mr. Servis obtained hundreds of bottles of the drug “SGF-1000,” which was compounded and manufactured in unregistered facilities and contained growth factors that Mr. Servis thought were undetectable through regular drug screens. Virtually all the horses in Servis’s barn received that drug, including the thoroughbred racehorse Maximum Security.
SGF-1000 was an intravenous drug promoted as, among other things, a vasodilator—it opens blood vessels wider and is capable of promoting stamina, endurance, and lower heart rates in horses. Mr. Servis approved veterinary bills to racehorse owners that contained concealed charges for SGF-1000, according to the Williams statement. Owners were falsely billed under the line item “Acupuncture & Chiropractic.”
In September 2019, the New York State Gaming Commission released an advisory specifying SGF-1000 was prohibited under the racing rules and had been prohibited since 2012. Servis continued to allow the administration of the drug on the horses he trained up until his arrest in March 2020, the statement said.
The horses Mr. Servis trained also were given the prescription drug “Clenbuterol” without a prescription. This was part of a deliberate attempt to hide the doping from racing regulators and avoid mandatory reporting requirements. He also received and transported a misbranded version of “Clenbuterol,” which he obtained from convicted co-defendant Jorge Navarro. This drug, most often used for people with asthma or breathing disorders to make breathing easier.
After his prison term, Mr. Servis, of Jupiter, Florida, will have one year of supervised release. He is ordered to pay $311,760 in forfeiture, $163,932 in restitution, and a $30,000 fine.
