Veterinarian Sentenced to 50 Months for Doping Racehorses in $47M Scheme

On May 11, 2022, Louis Grasso — a 65-year-old licensed veterinarian based in Pine Bush, New York, and a central supplier in what federal prosecutors described as the largest racehorse doping investigation in American history — pleaded guilty in the Southern District of New York to one felony count of drug adulteration and misbranding conspiracy after a multi-year FBI and FDA criminal investigation revealed he had systematically supplied corrupt harness racing trainers with custom-made, medically unnecessary performance-enhancing drugs, including human erythropoietin products such as Epogen, written on false prescriptions and distributed in bulk without veterinary oversight. On November 15, 2022, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel sentenced Grasso to 50 months in federal prison, two years of supervised release, $412,442.62 in forfeiture, and $47,656,576 in restitution — the full measure of corrupt purse winnings his PED supply made possible for co-defendants including trainer Richard Banca, whose doped horses earned approximately $16 million, and Canadian trainer Rene Allard, whose horses earned approximately $25 million. At sentencing, prosecutors presented Grasso's own text messages in which he wrote that he had "ALWAYS been the bad guy" and bragged that he played into the reputation because it kept "the persona where I like it" — a admission of deliberate, years-long corruption that Judge Castel cited in imposing a sentence above those given to any of his co-defendants. The horses Grasso was licensed to protect were instead injected with adulterated substances of unknown safety by trainers operating without any veterinary supervision.