Scott Mangini, one of 27 individuals indicted last year on charges related to the illegal administration of substances to racehorses, was sentenced to 18 months of prison and three years of supervised release during a sentencing hearing on Friday. Mangini, who ran two internet compounding sites that sold products of dubious efficacy, had entered a guilty plea to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding conspiracy prior to the Friday sentencing hearing. The guidelines for the court allowed for a maximum sentence of 60 months in prison. Mangini was also ordered to forfeit approximately $8 million in illegal proceeds from the businesses. J. Paul Oetken, a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of New York, handed down the sentence after Mangini delivered a statement acknowledging his crime and stating that he was “filled with regret and remorse.” Oetken noted that he had handed down an identical sentence to Scott Robinson, who had obtained misbranded and adulterated substances from Mangini for several years stretching back a decade. Robinson was one of the 27 indicted individuals. “I do think that sending the message that this sort of crime will be taken seriously is important,” Oetken said. :: To stay up to date, follow us on: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter The sentence was issued after a lengthy discussion among attorneys for Mangini and the government over the use of the term “performance-enhancing drugs” in the sentencing document. Mangini’s attorney, William Harrington, argued that the substances were merely dietary supplements that did not contain banned substances in racing. Harrington likened the products to those available at stores that specialize in dietary supplements for humans that also make similar claims about “performance-enhancing” effects. “It wasn’t a targeted PED business,” Harrington said. “That very dramatic narrative [of the U.S. Attorney’s office] is not what the business was.” Andrew Adams, the U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, countered that the claims the substances were not intended to be “performance-enhancing” contradicted how they were marketed on the websites. “Mr. Mangini’s position that none of these drugs were designed or marketed as intended to be performance-enhancing drugs is just ludicrous,” he said. “It’s belied by the marketing materials, it’s belied by the components of the drugs themselves. … There’s a self-serving argument that Mr. Mangini was just defrauding all of his customers.” Adams also said that the sites sold products containing cobalt, which was targeted by regulators five years ago as a mineral being used for potential performance-enhancing effects, and that Mangini had helped Robinson obtain a blood-building “mimetic,” which are also illegal in racing. Oetken said the debate over whether the drugs were performance-enhancing was a “semantic issue” given that the charge was based on misbranding and adulterating drugs, but he ultimately ruled that he would change all reference to “performance-enhancing drugs” in the sentencing report to “animal drugs, including drugs that may enhance animal performance.” Mangini and his attorney acknowledged that the businesses were designed to evade FDA rules and regulations, and both stated that they were aware that regulators had stepped up scrutiny of the businesses, which were warehoused in Florida, prior to Mangini being indicted. After an inspection for the Florida Department of Health in 2015, for example, prosecutors claimed that Mangini was “undeterred” and merely closed the warehouse down and opened a new one. The internet sites run by Mangini had a notorious reputation among racing regulators because of the fantastic claims for the products that were being offered, including language in marketing materials that said the substances “will not test,” which is shorthand for claiming that the substances will not return a positive drug test. Some of the substances were recommended to be administered within hours of post time, which would run afoul of regulations in many states that prohibit the administrations of any substances on raceday other than those provided for in the rules. Nevertheless, regulators had obtained samples of the products that were offered by the sites on numerous occasions over the past decade and found that the substances were essentially snake-oil, with very little efficacy and highly inaccurate labeling. “His business was illegal,” Harrington told the judge, prior to sentencing. “He mis-branded drugs. It’s a regulatory crime, it’s a safety crime, and there are important reasons why those rules exist. He broke those rules.”