Jeff Novitzky

Jeff Novitzky is an agent for the Food and Drug Administration investigating the use of steroids in professional sports. Before April 2008 he was a special agent for the Internal Revenue Service who investigated the use of steroids for over five years.^[1] His investigations have concerned Marion Jones, Barry Bonds, Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, Kirk Radomski, Floyd Landis and Lance Armstrong.

On May 20, 2010, The New York Daily News reported that Novitzky was involved in an investigation into performance enhancing drug use on Lance Armstrong's Tour de France teams, and that Armstrong's former teammate Floyd Landis was cooperating with the investigation.^[2] Previously, Marion Jones, a track and field Olympian winner, pleaded guilty in October 2007 to making false statements to Novitzky. Novitzky was also able to convince Kirk Radomski, a former New York Mets club house worker, to become a government informer. Radomski has now been convicted of distributing anabolic steroids to over a dozen Major League Baseball players.

Novitzky was also a major source of information in the Mitchell Report about doping in Major League Baseball.

Criticism

Novitzky has been, at times, criticized by certain defendants in steroid-related cases who perceive that he is biased and unfair. The defendants claim that he has a vendetta against Bonds. Michael Rains, a lawyer for Barry Bonds, asserts that Novitzky lied in the court documents used to obtain much of the evidence gathered against Bonds.^[3] In September 2009, Elliot Peters, an attorney representing the Major League Baseball Players' Association, blamed Novitsky for the illegal collection of results from baseball's 2003 drug tests: "“I have a hard time not believing that once Novitzky put together the list, people in the government weren’t chatting about who was on the list... Just about any federal judge would give a criminal defendant much more time for violating a court’s sealing order than they would for someone using a steroid.”^[4] The jail sentence given to Troy Ellerman, a lawyer who leaked information during the BALCO prosecutions, was by far the longest handed out to any person involved with the cases.

References

1. ^ Watching athletes go cold turkey M & G
2. ^ Vinton, Nathaniel (2010-05-20). "Floyd Landis outlines elaborate doping system in letters, details Lance Armstrong's alleged role". The New York Daily News. http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2010/05/19/2010-05-19_floyd_landis_says_lance_armstrong_others_were_involved_in_blood_doping_during_to.html. Retrieved 2010-05-20. 
3. ^ "A Harvest of Trash and Turmoil for an Agent Fighting Steroids". New York Times. November 8, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/sports/baseball/18agent.html?ei=5087&em=&en=2fc4b0dba38ef908&ex=1195707600&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2007-02-10. 
4. ^ http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=li-novitzkylist090809&prov=yhoo&type=lgns