Downloaded from YTS.MX
[Porter Fischer] I get a call from Gary Jones.
He is our tanning technician
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
that changes bulbs and fixes wires on tanning beds
at Boca Tanning Club at Boca Raton.
He calls me up.
"Hey, why don't you... You gotta stop by the salon. I'll meet you there.
I got this new solution, you're gonna love it."
I show up.
I parked in the back.
Gary's there, Anthony's there.
And he's like, "Well, go on in there, go try the solution."
So I go in there, and I get the spray tan.
I come back out and Gary's in the lobby.
"Hey, yo, how does it smell? Oh, the color looks fantastic.
Hey, how did... Doesn't the color look fantastic?" Blah, blah.
"Hey, you know what, that's great, I'm gonna go give it a try."
Got my shoes on and I'm walking out to my car.
And I see my door's open, and my trunk is open.
"Is that my car?"
Everything's gone.
So I go running back into the salon
and I yell at the girl. I said, "Call 911. Call 911."
I went back to the room and I'm banging on the door.
I'm like, "Gary, get out here, I've been robbed!"
He's like, "What?" I'm like, "Somebody broke into my car,
and took all my shit. Took everything."
The cop shows up.
I'm jumping up and down, I'm telling the cop,
"Look, they took everything. They took everything."
And he's like, "Calm down." I'm like, "They took evidence.
They took State's evidence, for a criminal case."
"Whoa, what are you talking about?" I go, "Biogenesis.
Biogenesis. Baseball. Alex.
You know who... You know what I'm talking about? A-Rod!"
[audience cheering]
[man] Play ball!
[Tony Bosch] I was living in a hotel room at The Ritz in Key Biscayne.
It was private. I was looking for privacy.
You know, I was going through this separation, through the divorce,
and it was an emotional time,
it was a time of decisions.
[audience cheering]
One day, I was sitting at the hotel bar,
like I did, probably at three or four o'clock everyday,
drowning my sorrows, and I overheard the bartender
speaking with the other bartender.
And they were discussing how they work out in the gym
and what they use in the gym
and how Equipoise is better than Winstrol
or how to take steroids, growth hormones, and performance-enhancing drugs.
"Listen, with all due respect,
I don't want to get involved in your business
but I think you're doing that a little wrong."
And he says, "Well, what do you mean?"
"I don't think you should use the growth hormone
with the dosages that you're using,
and the way you're using it.
You have a natural production of growth hormone in the evening.
You have one in the morning. But the one in the evening
is a lot greater than the one in the morning,
and, you know, you should then follow that same pattern
of growth hormone release."
He says, "Well, I don't understand, nobody explained it like this.
The guy in the gym, my trainer told me to take it like this.
Can you repeat that, but so I can understand?"
I said, "Yeah, sure, not a problem."
So I took a napkin and I wrote the whole thing down on the napkin.
About five days later, he sees me, he says,
"That's a great protocol! My workouts are unbelievable.
I feel re-energized. I lost a few pounds.
Do you mind if you could help my wife out, too?"
Four or five days later,
he comes back, he says,
"My wife is dying to meet you.
She has about three friends for you."
So, really, at the end of the day,
I acquired my first clients
at a bar at The Ritz.
That's really the origin story of me in Miami,
starting my anti-aging clinic.
[Tim Elfrink] Tony Bosch has a really typical Miami, Cuban-American story
that's also pretty extraordinary in its own ways.
[audience cheering]
His dad is a licensed physician
who studied in Cuba and actually
trained in a hospital in Havana during the revolution.
[Bosch] My parents, they were both physicians.
[Elfrink] He also was related to a guy named Orlando Bosch
who ended up becoming one of the most famous
anti-Castro terrorists in Miami history.
[female reporter] Dr. Orlando Bosch served four years in jail here
for the late '60s bazooka attack
on a Polish ship in the port of Miami.
From the moment I remember, we were playing stickball in the street,
you know, or some form of baseball. I wanted to be a baseball player.
You know, what kid didn't want to be a baseball player and play for the Mets?
These guys were like my heroes, you know, growing up.
I started playing baseball
in Christopher Columbus High School, Miami.
It's an all boys private Catholic school.
Alex Rodriguez, he went there, too.
He wasn't A-Rod back then, he was just Alex Rodriguez.
It was a breeding ground for ball players.
Cuban-Americans, the sons of refugees,
they had this passion for the sport.
[Elfrink] It's not a surprise,
considering this is basically the capital of Latin America
and baseball is enormous in a lot of these countries.
[speaking Spanish]
[Pedro Gomez] I think, even though a lot of people associate football
to the state of Florida and to Miami,
baseball is king.
[audience cheering]
You go to any high school here, there are...
[chuckles] Stars in the making.
Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro, Danny Tartabull,
Lenny Harris.
Heroes in the game in that era had to be, hands down, Jose Canseco.
I mean, he was a real deal.
With or without the steroids,
you know, I believe he was a great ball player.
And the Cuban people in Miami was very proud of him.
He was a role model, he was a hero.
It was the American dream.
But my all time hero was Pete Rose.
Charlie Hustle. I just loved the way he played.
He played hard, he played with a passion,
he played with a love for the sport,
he was everything, you know, to me growing up.
Yeah, I think the Cubans are a little permissive with their heroes.
You know, the first year, I didn't play much
and I think I was more interested in girls back then. In the party scene.
I got kicked off the team, I think two times.
One for smoking weed, you know, getting high. [chuckles]
Another time for showing up late to practice
or not showing up.
It was just...
Thinking back on, it was a disaster.
You know... [laughing] I'm better off as a fan than a player.
My plan after high school was definitely go into the family business.
You know, go into medicine.
[Elfrink] Uh, unfortunately, you know, privilege alone isn't enough
to get a medical degree.
You kinda have to have the drive, you have to have the intelligence.
And, uh, Tony didn't have what it took
to become a doctor in the United States.
[Bosch] So, I said, you know,
the fastest path is a foreign medical school.
Belize is the only English-speaking country in Central America.
That's why I chose Belize Medical College.
That program was a three-and-a-half year program.
You could obtain your doctor degree in allopathic medicine,
which basically means, you know,
M.D., Medical Doctor.
The Belize School of Medical and Performing Arts,
I believe is the actual title.
Let's just say it doesn't meet typical US standards
for a medical school.
And that's where I basically decided
I wanted to get into the anti-aging business.
Florida was known for Ponce de León and the Fountain of Youth.
And so it was very fitting
to, you know, open up here in Miami.
What is Miami about? What is Florida about?
It's about vanity and sex.
Florida, the penis of America!
Florida, the penis of America.
It was a perfect place
for the anti-aging movement.
Florida became the anti-aging capital of the world
'cause of the laws in the anti-aging industry.
There was no laws.
The anti-aging clinics had exploded in numbers
by the time I got here in 2011.
[audience cheering]
And basically, you'd have doctors,
or people who pretended to be doctors,
giving all types of medical advice.
Um, and in many times, writing prescriptions.
There's almost no regulations, so anyone can open one of these clinics,
even someone as unqualified as Tony Bosch.
And he jumps right in, he starts off with a clinic in Key Biscayne
which is a very wealthy island town just off Miami.
[Bosch] The role I took was basically as an educator.
I considered myself the scientist behind the scenes,
rather than a, you know, physician.
[Hill] Anthony Bosch was portraying himself as a medical doctor
by giving people anti-aging supplements.
Testosterone, HGH, so on and so forth,
which he was not licensed to do here in the state of Florida,
or in any other state in the union.
I didn't have prescription powers in the state of Florida,
but the doctors that worked for me did.
He would find a doctor, an actual licensed doctor,
to put their name on the operation.
His most obvious solution was his own father,
who was a licensed doctor, who had a prescription pad.
And for several of the anti-aging clinics was listed as the Medical Director.
Thousands of doctors retire to Florida, basically,
when they're done operating a practice elsewhere in the country,
and these doctors rent out their prescription pads
and their DEA numbers,
so that people like Tony Bosch
can get drugs and run anti-aging clinics.
And they get a little cut of the profit.
They had a prescription pad from one doctor
who died while the clinic was operating
and was continued to be listed as a Medical Director
for years after his death.
I thought he was still alive.
But yeah, and then... And then his partner told me,
"No, he died, so I'm writing the prescriptions from now on."
The initial inspiration behind the anti-aging offices
was really to provide hormone replacement therapy
for all types of patients.
For weight loss, menopausal women...
It was never intended to be for sports performance.
But as a baseball fan, I was definitely following what was going on
with doping in baseball.
[Gomez] Over a 20-year period or so,
there were dozens of players that all of a sudden
started hitting 50, 60, even 70 home runs in a season.
[man] Power.
Music with more muscle.
[Gomez] Things that had never happened
in the 100-plus-year history of the game.
Often, Major League Baseball has been complicit and profited from it.
[announcer] Major League Baseball Productions presents...
[reading]
Never before have two men so captured
the imagination of the baseball world.
I wanna thank both Mark McGwire
and Sammy Sosa
for providing us with a home run chase
that has captivated sports fans around the world.
[Elfrink] Ask any baseball scholar
how important the McGwire-Sosa home run race was
to bring the fans back after the strike in 1994,
and then ask them if that race ever would've happened without steroids.
And I think that's the only answer you need
about the relationship baseball's had from profiting from these drugs.
[Gomez] You know, you go back to playoff games that the A's played
at Fenway Park, and the crowd is chanting,
"Steroids, steroids," while Canseco's playing right field.
And what does Jose do?
He turns to the crowd and he flexes.
[Elfrink] Things came to a head in the early 2000s,
especially after the BALCO scandal.
[reporter] The Federal probe into this Bay Area nutritional lab
has targeted Barry Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson.
That, confirmed one day after Major League Baseball disclosed
that between five and seven percent of its first ever steroid tests
turned up positive,
triggering a new policy of escalating discipline.
[George W. Bush] The use of performance-enhancing drugs
like steroids
in baseball, football and other sports,
is dangerous and it sends the wrong message.
That there are shortcuts to accomplishment
and that performance is more important than character.
So tonight, I call on team owners, Union representatives,
coaches and players to take the lead
to send the right signal,
to get tough and to get rid of steroids, now.
[applause]
[Elfrink] And Congress got involved.
There were hearings,
there was a huge amount of political pressure
on baseball to do something.
[man] Are you taking the Fifth?
I'm not here to discuss the past,
I'm here to be positive about this subject.
[Anderson Cooper] After years of watching skinny players
turning into Neanderthals,
and 40-year-old pitchers throwing 100-mile-an-hour fastballs,
there weren't a lot of Americans who were shocked today
when George Mitchell submitted his 409-page report
to Major League Baseball.
For more than a decade,
there has been widespread illegal use of anabolic steroids
and other performance-enhancing substances
by players in Major League Baseball.
His report is a call to action
and I will act.
As far as the athlete was concerned,
all of a sudden, there's this roadblock now, right?
Called the Mitchell Report, all these regulations...
You know, "We're gonna be watching you, do more testing..."
These agents and these trainers started to come to me
asking me if I can help them.
It was obvious that they were trying to get around the Mitchell Report.
Now, what Tony really based his whole sales pitch on
is this idea called micro-dosing.
"If you follow my instructions to a T,
you take small doses at exactly the right time,
you will get the boost, you will get the energy and the strength,
but it won't be enough of any of these drugs to set off
the alarm bells, if you get tested after a game."
[Bosch] In 2007, a baseball agent came to me
and he was talking about a client of his.
The way he put it was, "I don't know what's wrong with this guy,
he can't even pick up a bat and put it on his shoulders."
You know, "He's tired all the time,
he's not the same ball player that he was before."
I took a look at all his blood work.
The testosterone levels were at levels of a 90-year-old man.
I said, "All right," you know,
"This guy obviously needs, you know, some type of testosterone therapy.
You wanna tell me who it is?"
He told me, "Yeah, it's Manny Ramirez."
When I first met him, he came in and he hugged me.
And when he hugged me, he like patted me down.
I thought he was hugging me, you know, out of love.
But it was basically... [laughing] He was patting me down.
You know, from there, I was able to put a protocol together
in order to address the testosterone deficiency.
As soon as I got his testosterone levels up,
you started to see the flashes of the old Manny.
Within weeks, his focus was much better.
He felt a lot quicker, he wasn't tired anymore.
And of course, his power was back.
"Dr. T, wow, I feel like a million dollars.
I see the ball like a grapefruit.
It's coming at me, I can see the stitching on the ball."
[ball whooshing]
Manny was the first VIP client that I had
that I actually traveled with and actually hit the road with him.
If he was playing in Boston, I was in Boston.
If he was in Chicago, I was in Chicago.
He was in a hotel room and I was just a couple of suites away.
In case we would meet up with anybody, or if anybody asked,
I was never Dr. T in front of anybody.
I was never... You know, I was the marketing guy,
or I was his promotion guy, his publicist.
Manny being Manny, very eccentric character.
Almost like a cartoon character.
He was quirky about some things, to say the least.
You know, one of the things, he didn't like to sleep by himself.
Not only didn't he like to sleep by himself,
but he wanted a good bedtime story.
I found myself,
a couple of times, sleeping in the same room next to him,
you know, on a different bed obviously,
and speaking to him until he fell asleep.
There was an initial fee, $40,000.
As our relationship grew,
probably about two years, '07 to '09,
so did his regimen and so did the cost of it.
Listen, each home run costs money.
2007, his home run total was 20
and in 2008 it was 37.
That difference is a big deal
when it comes to multi-million dollar contracts and free agency.
-I'm back! -[reporters laughing]
[reporter] After months of haggling,
Manny Ramirez and the Los Angeles Dodgers have come to terms
on a two-year contract worth $45 million.
I remember when, um, when the news broke,
February 2009, about A-Rod testing positive.
[reporter] Rodriguez has admitted doping from 2001 to 2003.
I screwed up big time.
But I think the only thing I ask from this group today,
and the American people,
is to judge me from this day forward.
That's all I can ask for.
[interviewer] What was your reaction when you heard
Alex Rodriguez admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs?
I don't know, I was just enjoying myself, playing the game.
And I wasn't paying any mind to that.
[interviewer] Has anyone ever approached you
-anytime during your career about using... -No.
-You were never tempted? -No.
[Bosch] Manny wasn't too concerned.
He mentioned it, you know, almost in passing.
"You see what happened? That's not gonna happen to us, right?"
I go, "No, no, don't worry about it.
As long as you keep the regimen going correctly
and doing what I'm telling you to do and being compliant,
nothing like that is gonna happen," you know.
I'm Sage Steele again, with shocking news
breaking about 45 minutes ago, here on SportsCenter.
Major League Baseball has confirmed
that Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez has tested positive
for performance-enhancing drugs,
and he will be suspended immediately for 50 games.
[Bosch] So I called Manny, "Manny, what happened?"
You know, he tells me in Spanish,
"T, I think I fucked up," you know.
[speaking Spanish, laughs]
[newscaster reading]
[Bosch] Part of his regimen was a liquid-based testosterone
that he would take in low quantities
if he had a day off.
He mistakenly injected that
on a playing day and it just so happened
that they tested him that day.
I'm only as good as the protocol.
I'm only as good as your compliance.
I'm not a magician, you know.
There is no way I can make shit disappear.
How do you feel about the whole Manny Ramirez situation, Harry?
Hey, Seth, don't you think Manny Ramirez
looks like the monster from Predator?
[audience laughing]
And of course, then I started thinking,
it's like, "Wow, what are the repercussions?"
Somebody has to be held accountable for this, so...
And that's really the mode I went into, crisis management mode.
And all hell broke loose after that.
Major League Baseball confirming the existence
of a federal investigation involving Manny Ramirez.
The DEA, Drug Enforcement Agency,
looking at a Miami doctor and his son
as the source for the banned performance-enhancing drug
that led to Ramirez's 50-game suspension.
[Bosch] Went down to the bar,
told the bartender to turn on ESPN
and watched the whole shitshow from there.
The Drug Enforcement Administration is investigating
Miami physician Pedro Bosch
to see if he gave improper or illegal prescriptions
to Ramirez and others.
[reporter 1] His son, 45-year-old Anthony Bosch,
is believed to have worked as a contact
between his father and Ramirez.
The younger Bosch is also well known in Latin American baseball circles.
-[reporter 2] Manny Ramirez-- -[reporter 3] Manny Ramirez--
The King of Pop is dead.
Michael Jackson, two months shy of his 51st birthday,
died today in Los Angeles.
[Bosch] While this was going on,
unfortunately, the news of Michael Jackson's death was reported.
That same day, the news of Farrah Fawcett's death was reported.
My story took a back page, way, way in the back page.
Which is where I wanted to be.
And my lawyer, you know, says, "Listen to me.
I think we could salvage all this.
And actually, you could benefit from this."
And so he told me, "Lay low and after you lay low,
uh, your business is gonna explode because you were Manny's guy."
Sure enough, for a couple of months, I laid low,
I came back and business boomed.
Before this happened, we were seeing
maybe five, six, seven new patients a week.
Now, all of a sudden, we're seeing 50, 55, 60 new patients a week.
[Elfrink] There were real estate brokers and lawyers,
and attorneys and doctors,
and you know, just ordinary Miamians,
who would come to Tony Bosch to lose weight,
to get testosterone.
[Bosch] I had also cop clients.
Close to 100.
Of course, I had a police special.
I could very easily just build my business on normal wealthy clients
looking for hormone replacement therapy.
What I found in athletes
was that I was able to witness those results.
I was able to turn on the TV
or go to the ball game and I saw my work.
Just by hearing the crack of the bat,
I could tell that it was working.
It was the love of baseball.
It was almost like, "Hey, Mom, I made it to the big leagues,
but in a different way, you know." [laughs]
I had nicknames for, especially, the athlete clients.
There was this one player, Jordan Norberto,
he basically gave me a Yukon in payment.
And so his name was "Yukon."
Bartolo Colon. Colon was "DUI," 'cause he had just gotten a DUI.
So... [laughs]
César Puello, his potential was at another level,
so I basically coined him "Mijo."
"My son," 'cause I was gonna be proud
when he was gonna make it to the major leagues
and he was gonna tear it up.
And then we had the college athletes.
In the 2005 MLB draft,
four out of the five guys that got drafted from the University of Miami,
that went in the first ten rounds, were in my books.
That included Cesar Carrillo and Ryan Braun.
Then there was the, you know, my high school clientele.
The majority of these guys came to me,
brought by their parents,
brought by their coaches, their trainers from local high schools
and asked me to please make sure that
they were good to go for the June draft.
[Elfrink] I think he really understood that psychology of how much
these kids wanted an edge,
wanted any kind of edge,
and not just the kids, how much their parents wanted that edge.
A lot of them are gonna get drafted right out of high school,
so there's a huge amount of competition to get a starting place
at some of these top programs.
When you start administering to high school, teenage kids
that are not adults,
now, all of a sudden, you have absolutely crossed the line.
And that's, uh... Especially, if you don't have a medical license.
[Elfrink] While Tony Bosch was running this clinic in Coral Gables,
he met a patient who would end up becoming
a really key player in everything that would come.
The guy's name was Jorge Velazquez.
[audience cheering]
Ugi was a convicted criminal.
He knew guys who had drugs around Miami.
And he basically became Tony's black market source.
We were consuming so much product
that, at times, I had to go to the black market
to purchase these products.
And I would purchase it from Ugi.
[Elfrink] Ugi would get his drugs from a Brazilian guy
in Kendall, which is a suburb of Miami,
who would basically concoct testosterone in his garage.
That was a big source for Ugi.
He was a resourceful guy.
He was sort of your typical street dealer
who could get what you needed if you couldn't find it.
[Bosch] Ugi referred a patient named Yuri Sucart to me.
I had no idea who he was.
He put in his occupation, "personal assistant"
or something like that, but not to whom.
Every visit, this guy would wear this Yankee paraphernalia, you know.
He had a World Series ring on.
I couldn't ignore that thing. It was huge.
I tell him, "Do you have anything to do with the Yankees?"
And he says, "Yeah, my cousin's in the Yankees,
and I'm his personal trainer.
My cousin wants to meet with you."
And I went to Tampa. It was a boutique hotel in Tampa.
He knocked on the door
and when the door was opened, it was A-Rod. It was Alex.
The first words out of his mouth was,
"I want whatever Manny was taking."
He doesn't know who I am.
He doesn't know why Manny pissed dirty.
But he knew how Manny performed and played.
[laughing] So I'm thinking to myself, "Wow."
You know, he couldn't care less that Manny got caught.
He couldn't care less, you know. He just wants the juice.
That tells you a lot about risk versus reward, I think.
[announcer] The World Champion New York Yankees
against the Kansas City Royals from Kauffman Stadium.
[Bosch] I had a true believer right away,
you know, seven days after he started my program,
he went ahead and in one game, he hit three home runs.
I asked him how he felt, he says,
you know, "I feel like I'm 18 again.
I don't know what fuel you put in there,
but whatever it is, just keep on putting it."
His down payment was 80 grand.
The ongoing arrangement was he would pay $12,000 a month, cash.
And his goal was 800 home runs.
He told me he was gonna give me a bonus once we hit the 800.
And he said, "I'll give you an extra 150 grand a year
if you give me an exclusivity."
I said, "For 200, you got a deal."
My experience with Alex...
I guess I got to summarize it as... It was weird.
I remember him having an apartment...
The apartment was on the Hudson in New York.
The whole entire apartment was white.
I'm talking about even the wooden floors.
I thought it was... It was just too white.
All the TVs were on
and it was basically footage from years ago of himself,
hitting a home run or hitting the winning RBI and...
He used it as motivation and inspiration.
I would travel and meet him
and do all these treatments on site.
You know, I had injected people in the most weirdest places.
One ball player, he missed his injection and I go, "Where are you?"
He says, "I'm at a gas station up North Federal Highway."
We did it right there in the gas station.
One player, I said, "Well, where are you?"
He says, "Well, I'm at Marlins Stadium."
So, it was hilarious. I pulled into Marlins Stadium.
It was, like, three hours before game time
and here he comes in his flip-flops, wearing his full uniform.
Literally, we pulled into the Pollo Tropical parking lot.
He got out, went into the restroom first.
I got out and went to the restroom.
I injected him there.
The one that tops it all off
was the one with Alex in the bathroom at LIV nightclub.
Dale.
[upbeat music playing]
[Bosch] I would do blood tests
to see what deficiencies he may have
and see if we can correct those deficiencies.
He basically sat on the toilet, you know, on the toilet,
and then I had to get on my knee
and actually draw the blood.
[music continues]
Alex had gotten two tables
and I was at one of the tables with Ugi.
Everybody was bouncing up and down...
When I realized I lost the vial of blood.
I said, "Alex, we got a problem."
He says, "What's the problem now?" I said, "I lost the vial."
He goes, "You gotta be fucking kidding me."
So we're all on the fucking ground looking for a vial of blood
while everybody's jumping up and down around us.
[all yelling]
What's up, guys? I'm Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino
from Jersey Shore. That's right.
And, um, everybody knows how much I love to tan.
This is Boca Tanning right here, first class facility.
This is pretty much the best tanning salon in the nation.
And that's the situation, so...
[Bosch] Ugi was a partner in Boca Tanning.
Ugi comes to me and says,
"Listen, I want you to meet these guys.
They have a bunch of tanning salons called Boca Tanning.
We could create like a spa feel to this
and there's room in all these tanning salons,
and so they wanna talk to you about creating maybe a pilot program."
He sort of wants to find a way to maybe turn this into a franchise,
have a bigger idea for his business.
And that's when he connects with the Boca Tanning salon
which is run by the Carbone brothers.
[audience cheering]
[Bosch] And I met with Pete Carbone
at his Boca Tanning facility in South Miami for the first time,
and then we discussed how we can do business.
[Elfrink] Pete and Anthony Carbone are almost right out of Goodfellas,
and New York tough guys, who found their way down to Florida
and basically washed into the tanning salon business
after their police academy dreams did not pan out.
[Bosch] We opened up a pilot office at Boca Tanning.
The pilot program was called Boca Body.
That's where I met Porter Fischer for the first time also.
My vice happens to be tanning
and that's something I enjoy doing.
[audience cheering]
The Vitamin D, the warmth on your body...
No matter how I feel, when I walk into a tanning salon,
if I spend some time in front of the bulb, I always feel better.
And you try different lotions and your skin feels soft and dark.
Everything about it is built to make you feel better about yourself.
And you do.
My old stomping grounds, which was South Miami,
Sunset Place, right across the street from the University of Miami,
there was a tanning salon called Boca Tanning Club opening up.
And I went by and talked to the owners
and they seemed like very, very nice guys.
So I became a regular customer.
When people would introduce me,
they'd say, "Oh, Porter, he's a regular customer."
I would jump in and say, "Yes, I'm a professional tanner."
I knew the bulbs, I knew the lotions, I knew the operations,
and when people come in, I almost became like
Norm at the end of the bar.
You know, "Porter!"
[Elfrink] Florida is the Sunshine State
and yet, despite that fact,
Florida has more tanning salons per capita
than anywhere else in the United States.
[Fischer] Especially down here in Miami,
everyone's thing is, "Now, now, now, now."
Why do you go tan? 'Cause I can get it now.
I want it now. I want the money now. I want the fame now.
When they first opened,
they were the only 24/7 tanning salon in the country.
When you have a 24/7 business,
you know that old saying, "Nothing good happens after three o'clock?"
Well, lo and behold, that comes to end up being true.
There was another tanning salon company
that had bought up
a couple of Boca Tanning Clubs outside the city.
And Pete had told me, he was like, "Yeah, if these people come down here,
that's the kind of stuff that gets you killed."
And I was like, "I know, that'll probably piss you off."
He's like, "No, no, you have no idea.
When you're fucking with a man's family, and their food,
and their business,
that shit gets you killed, and gets you killed quick."
Pete did come across as kind of a Godfather type.
That was kind of... So I kept a little bit of distance.
And I personally didn't wanna piss him off because I enjoyed going there.
I didn't wanna get banned.
I enjoyed going to the tanning salon,
so why would I wanna do something to fuck it up?
There's a lot of beautiful people that came into the salons.
So it was a nice place to hang out.
It's nice to be part of it
and not looking from the outside in.
I basically got chubby and out of weight.
I had gotten all the way up to almost 240.
But no matter how much I would try,
I would never be younger,
and I didn't know if I could ever get back to that level.
Anthony was looking for a way to expand on the business.
So they started doing reconstruction
to separate part of the building
into a wellness anti-aging clinic.
Boca Body was partnered off with Jorge Velazquez,
who Pete had known. He went by the name Ugi.
I said, "What goes on in there?"
And he said, "Oh, we have a side business. We're gonna do anti-aging.
Are you on a protocol?"
And he goes, "No, I'll introduce you to the doctor."
That's where I first met Tony Bosch.
I walked in the door to Boca Body
and there's Tony sitting behind a desk.
He had a white lab coat that said "Dr. Tony Bosch."
He had a stethoscope around his neck.
Yeah, I assumed he was a doctor.
I introduced myself and we started talking,
and handed him the blood work.
Tony looked at it for a couple of minutes and goes, "Yeah, we can work with this.
Where are you from? Where'd you go to school?"
And I said, "I went to Columbus." And he said, "Oh, so did I."
And so he goes, "You know what? I'm gonna give you the Columbus discount."
The next question is, he goes, "Do you know who I am?"
And I'm like, "No."
And he goes, "Baseball?"
I went, "No, sorry."
On the heels of the line of questioning, I thought he meant,
"Do you know who I am? I played baseball for Columbus."
[clicks tongue]
Where do I start with Porter Fischer?
I don't know where to start with that guy.
Um...
All right.
He came across almost like an abandoned child.
A very needy person. A person that wanted attention.
A person that required attention and required approval.
[Fischer] At the time, my fitness goal was to lose weight.
He goes, "Here, try this."
He gave me one pill.
"Try this." Went over to the gym, about a half an hour,
I felt great, felt fantastic.
And I came back and I said, "What was that?"
And he goes, "Oh, that's what Lance Armstrong takes."
I was like, "Oh. Oh, okay."
And so I walked away thinking to myself,
"Hey, I'm taking what Lance Armstrong is taking.
Poor guy is getting ragged on in the media for taking steroids.
He's taking something that he's getting from a doctor.
Oh, yay, Lance."
And it worked.
I mean, after a time,
I went from 238 down to 186.
After that, there was no more Boca Body.
The personalities kind of clashed.
Not paying rent, skirting around the rules,
kind of bouncing from place to place.
That kind of arrangement wasn't gonna work with the Carbones
who do the exact same sort of thing.
I told Ugi and I told Pete it wasn't working out for me.
And I went ahead and dissolved my partnership
with them and I moved on.
[Elfrink] You can't hustle a hustler.
That's exactly what was going on in this case.
[Bosch] I opened up an office right next to the University of Miami.
I called it Biogenesis.
[Fischer] Once Boca Body had gotten dissolved,
I still continued to tan
but I missed getting the results.
So I went on a little hunting spree to go and find out where Tony was.
And finally tracked him down to his new location,
which was across from the University of Miami,
right next door to the UM baseball park,
which is named after Alex Rodriguez.
[Bosch] Porter showed up at Biogenesis.
[Fischer] And he goes, "Why are you here?"
I said, "I just wanna continue what we were doing before."
I said, "Can I still get the Columbus discount?"
He was like, "Sure. Tell me what you want."
And just off the top of my head, I said,
"I'd like to look like Sylvester Stallone."
He goes, "Yeah, we can make that happen."
I was like, "Really?"
He's like, "Yeah, we can make that happen. We'll just change the protocol."
[Bosch] He signed up and he became a client of Biogenesis
under my treatment, under my care.
At this time, Biogenesis had close to 300 athletes.
I was not hands-on with every single athlete, if you will.
I wasn't there, you know, making sure
that the protocol was being done correctly.
I wasn't there to make sure that there was compliance.
Obviously, it didn't help
with the lifestyle that I had going on at that time.
[upbeat music playing]
We were doing extremely well.
And I was too busy going to parties,
and I didn't think I was gonna get caught, foolishly.
And the fact that, you know, living in Miami,
it wasn't the same risk that I was taking like if I lived in North Dakota, you know.
Miami still has that mentality of the '80s
and the cocaine cowboys and the Wild Wild West.
I figured if I'd made it this far,
I can make it the rest of the way without getting caught.
I think the turning point
was when Melky Cabrera,
uh, you know, pissed positive.
[reporter] Cabrera flunked a drug test.
He was busted for using performance-enhancing drugs
to enhance his salary drive.
[Bosch] I knew it was the end. I ain't no dummy.
Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colón...
After Melky Cabrera's positive test,
athletics pitcher Bartolo Colón also got docked 50 games,
also for testosterone.
[Bosch] All these guys started pissing dirty, I decided, you know,
that was it for the athletes.
I wanna give this whole thing a rest.
I started releasing players.
I stopped accepting new patients,
so we were just providing the monthly service to the old patients.
And so, I didn't have the same income,
but I had the same staff, I had the same expenses.
So I was in total chaos at this time.
[Fischer] I started to notice...
There was not one stitch of advertising in the entire building.
And I thought that, "Hey, I wanted to contribute back
to an industry that I loved."
"Hey, I could really help this guy blow this business up."
"Hey, I'm a walking billboard for how well this guy does his job."
Tony, on some level, knows this is the last thing he could do.
He's essentially an illegal drug dealer, you know.
It'd be like going to your neighborhood coke dealer
in Miami, and telling him what a great job he's doing,
and how much you wanna advertise his services.
He can't do that. He knows he can't do that.
But Porter doesn't get that.
[Bosch] Porter started showing up more in my office.
He was basically loitering in my lobby
and I really didn't mind at that time
because anybody who came in,
you know, he sat down and he basically told them how great we were.
I had a guy working for me
who was my Chief Financial Officer, Ricky Martinez.
[Fischer] And I was like, "Hey, Ricky,
you know, why don't you let me do the marketing for you guys?
Let me help you guys out,
because I've been doing corporate marketing for a long time."
Every time I went in there, every month, I would ask,
"Let me do the marketing for you," and I got shunned away.
"If it's an issue, I'll pay for it.
Let me do the pamphlets and the business cards
and let me show you what I can do."
"No, you don't have to do that."
I was like, "No, I want to. I have a little bit of money now."
And he goes, "Oh, you have a little bit of money?"
[Elfrink] In between hanging out at the tanning salon,
he started riding his bicycle around the neighborhood.
[Fischer] When I was out there on the bike,
uh, I got hit by a car.
[tires screeching]
[crashing]
Which ended up being quite the godsend to Porter Fischer
because the Jaguar owner paid out
a hefty insurance settlement.
[Fischer] That night...
Boom! Tony had never talked to me about this before.
He called me up and goes, "Hey, I talked to Ricky,
and Ricky says that you came into a little bit of money."
[Bosch] He says, "I believe in you, I believe in the product,
and you know, I wanna see how I can get into the business."
[Fischer] "I have a different suggestion. Why don't you invest in the business?"
And I was like, "Oh!"
"You could be my marketing director
and I'll pay you 20% return.
Give me $4,000 and I'll give you back $4,800.
I'll pay you 1,200 bucks every week, and in a month you'll be paid back."
I was like, "Okay."
[Elfrink] If you can't understand the deal
that Porter and Tony Bosch made for $4,000,
it's probably because the deal doesn't make any sense.
There's a lot of dispute now
over whether this $4,000 was an investment in the company,
whether it was a loan.
I think basically what you had here was a guy in Tony Bosch
whose life was already sort of spiraling out of control,
who was willing to do anything to get money.
I think he probably told Porter
anything he needed to tell him to get this money out of his pocket.
[Fischer] Ricky asked me, he goes, "You sure you wanna do this?"
I said, "Ricky, I've been asking you guys every month,
to let me do the marketing." He was like,
"I just wanna make sure. You sure you wanna do this?"
And, so I wrote a check to Biogenesis for $4,000.
[Bosch] Porter Fischer makes this investment, right?
And so, he thinks he's part of this Biogenesis team.
By no means is he part of the Biogenesis team.
Okay, you know, let's find out, what can I do here?
I set up a whole Gmail account for everybody there.
Him, Ricky, his dad.
I was doing things to make this business a real business.
I said, "Ricky, let's do something on a website.
I'm gonna build your website for you.
Just designate what the packages are, let's figure out what our cost is.
What do we charge for testosterone?"
And he goes, "Well, if we get the prescription, it costs 100 bucks.
If we get it from Dr. Pedro."
And I was like, "Well, okay, where else..."
"Unless we get it from Ugi."
I'm like, "Why would you get it from Ugi?"
I don't know how it works, I'm sitting there going,
"Does Ugi know another doctor?"
[scoffs] "Porter, Ugi's nothing more than a glorified steroid dealer."
And I was like, "Okay, all right."
Now I'm starting to go, "Okay.
Now things are starting to fall in place a little bit."
I'm going, "Okay, that's why there's no advertising here."
When I realized how much time this guy required,
I started ignoring his requests for meetings and appointments.
And I think that irritated him and that frustrated him.
[Fischer] A week later, "Hey, Ricky, where's Tony?"
"Oh, he's not here."
"I know, but I'm supposed to get paid like 1,200 bucks."
"Well, what do you want me to tell you, Porter? He's not here."
I'm like, "And?"
"Well, Porter, I asked you if you were sure you wanted to do this."
So I finally went to Tony, and he goes, "Oh, I'm so sorry.
I was out of town. Taking care of business.
Hey, I know I promised you 1,200 bucks.
[nervously] I wanna renegotiate this.
No, don't freak out, Porter.
Let me give you $600 now."
[Bosch] I go into the nurses' room and I see him.
I go into my storage room and I see him.
I go to the financial office and I see him.
I see him in the parking lot when I come in.
I see him in the parking lot when I leave.
I see him everywhere, you know. It was borderline stalking.
The second week rolls around, I asked Ricky for the money,
he's like, "I don't have it now, come back tomorrow."
I said, "Why, what's the issue?"
He goes, "We have more people coming in tomorrow.
I need more cash customers."
And I'm like, "Ricky, what's going on here?"
"Porter, you don't understand, we're three months behind on rent."
I had a very expensive lifestyle.
I was consuming, I don't know, $40,000 a month in expenses.
There was the IRS, there was the child support,
it was this, it was the other thing.
I had two rents going on.
You know, one was $7,000 the other one was $5,000.
I kept that up.
For every dollar I had, I spent two.
And of course, my cocaine bill was $5,000, $6,000 a month.
You're still talking about 60k a month.
How could you possibly do that much drugs?
I even walked up to Rick, I said, "Look, if I don't get my money,
I'll blow this up. I'll blow this whole thing up.
And you're not gonna stand in my way,
you guys will just be collateral damage to me.
You're not gonna steal $4,000 from me. I want my money."
[Bosch] Porter became very irritable and frustrating and angry
and he would leave me these crazy voicemail messages and E-mails.
Insulting, degrading, I mean it was...
It got to the point where it was scary.
[Fischer] Tony's in his office and I come in and I say,
"Hey, Tony, how's it going?" He's like, "Oh, good, what can I do for you?"
I'm like, "I want my money."
He said, "Well, I don't have it."
I'm like, "Tony, this isn't a game. I want my money back.
You're way behind. I want my money."
He's like, "I'm Dr. Tony Bosch! What are you gonna do about it?"
Well, I'm sure as shit not gonna get fucked by you.
I had two choices right there.
Either smash this guy down to the ground right there,
or turn around and find out what's up and destroy his business.
[Bosch] Then that's when I told Ricky, "Listen,
don't pay him another cent more until we clear this shit up.
This guy is basically trouble."
[Elfrink] Porter Fischer is a really earnest guy
who really wears his emotions on his sleeve.
And he absolutely exploded.
And it's a lasting, burning, fiery rage
that happens when Porter feels he's been screwed over by somebody.
[Fischer] In the meantime, I can come and go as I want.
So I'm in there, I'm looking around, I'm taking pictures,
and trying to get a feel of what's going on.
[camera shutter clicking]
Then I'm sitting at the computer
and I turn around and I look behind me at these boxes.
Then it hit me.
Tony came in one day, just in a bad mood.
He goes, "I don't need any of you guys. I don't need any of you.
All I need is this." And turns around and picks up a folder.
"All I need is this. I could put this in the back of my car and do this job.
This is all I need."
And slapped down the folder and walked off.
I was like, "Oh, so he needs this? What are in these files?"
So I started looking and they were all basically
folders with people's names on it.
And you open it up.
I don't wanna even wanna call them "patient files,"
because it was loose-leaf pieces of paper, notes, Post-its.
So I pull it out and saw what the protocol Jon Secada was on.
[singing] I...
I don't wanna say it...
[Fischer] Looking around, there's four books sitting on his desk.
I open it up and I flip to one page.
It had baseball players starting off with Alex.
Melky Cabrera's name, Ryan Braun's name.
That's a surprise.
Baseball names, one after another,
with right there next to it, it said, "Pro."
Then a bunch of other names, it said, "COL."
And then a bunch of names, it said, "H.S."
Hundreds, thousands of names.
A lot of ones don't jump out at you, but certain ones do.
When you see the name A. Rodriguez,
in Miami, that doesn't jump out at you.
There's probably 1,000 Alex Rodriguezs.
But now you start to see the name "A-Rod."
Then it hit me again.
"Baseball. Do you know who I am?"
You know what, no, I don't know who he is.
Google.
"Anthony Bosch. Baseball."
And the very first thing that popped up
was a story from 2009 about him and his father's involvement
with Manny Ramirez and his suspension.
Oh, now we see what this is all about.
"Okay, fine. I don't have much time here left.
I got... This is about it. Um...
I want my money.
I want my money. What does he need?
You know what? He's got too much information in these books.
You know what? Boom.
I'm gonna find out what's going on with this guy. I'm gonna ruin this guy."
I started realizing that some of my notebooks
were actually missing.
So the first person I went to was Ricky Martinez.
And I said, "Listen, Ricky,
you know, I think somebody's been taking my things."
I get a text from Ricky, he says,
"Hey, Tony wants to talk to you." I said, "Does he have my money?"
He's like, "No, no, do you know where the books are?"
I'm like, "What books?"
"Tony had books on his desk that you may have inadvertently stored.
And he wants those back."
I'm like, "Hmm, well see, I'm so distraught
from not getting my money back,
that I don't know if I can deal with anything else right now."
Tony says, "You better bring his books back.
You don't know what you're in for..." So on and so forth. I'm like,
"Fine." That was basically my, "Fuck you, buddy."
He used the excuse that he wanted his money, immediately,
with compounded interest.
And I said, "Under no circumstances
am I gonna pay X amount of dollars over and above."
You know, in hindsight, maybe I should've paid for it.
It would've been, you know, a lot cheaper. [chuckles]
You know, for the price that I eventually paid.
[notification chimes]
[Elfrink] So one afternoon, I got an E-mail
that was tagged with the name David Castillo.
It was a very short message.
It basically said he had read a story that I had written a few years ago
about this guy named Tony Bosch.
"I have a little more information about this doctor.
I think you might be interested in it. Give me a call if you'd like."
The very next morning, he called me up.
As a journalist, I'm always immediately skeptical of people.
This guy was very excited, obviously very nervous.
By the end of the call, he had told me his real name,
so that I could check on who he was.
We had set up an appointment to meet at a sports bar
down in South Miami, right across the street from Boca Tanning.
Porter said, "I don't care about Major League Baseball.
I have one objective and that is to destroy Tony Bosch.
He lied to me and I want to completely blow up this guy's life."
[Fischer] Tim said, "Bosch isn't even a doctor."
I said, "I saw his certificate. University of Belize."
"He can go practice over there, but he's not authorized to practice here."
I was like... [scoffs]
I came in under best intentions to try and help this guy,
and come to find out that the guy is nothing but a piece of shit conman.
[Elfrink] He brought one of these notebooks with him
and let me take a look.
[Fischer] And he's like, "Can I get copies of this?"
I said, "Oh, yeah, you can get copies of this."
I said, "Can you take this guy down?"
He's like, "If what you're saying is true,
yeah, this is big."
[Bosch] Communication basically broke down with Porter Fischer.
I was extremely worried
that this information was gonna get in the wrong hands.
It was gonna fall into the wrong hands.
I called Alex and I told Alex this is what just happened.
You know, and these people are trying to extort me.
And that's when I went to Ugi.
I said, "Listen, we got a problem."
Ugi says, "Don't worry, I'll take care of this."
So Ugi gets Pete Carbone.
[Fischer] Now, I'm working with Tim, and I'm making copies of stuff.
Pete had called me like 15 times.
I called. Pete's like, "Where you been?
I need to ask you something. No bullshit. No lying.
I need to ask you something." I said, "What?"
And he goes, "Are you running a story on Bosch?"
And I'm like,
"I'm working with New Times."
"You have no idea what you're dealing with.
Now, you're gonna be killed."
I said, "By Bosch?"
And he goes, "No! Ugi."
I go, "Ugi? Why?"
He goes, "You don't know! You know how this guy's connected?
This guy's the real deal. There are a lot of people involved.
Don't do this. You got to stop this story. You don't wanna mess with Ugi.
This guy's connected. Connected big time.
You're gonna get killed if this story runs."
And so basically, I'm thinking to myself,
"Okay, I just stumbled across some kind of steroid factory
or steroid ring,
and Ugi is the one that's gonna go down for this."
Now, I freak out.
Now, I'm literally freaked out.
He goes, "I'm coming over." I said, "Don't come over."
He goes, "I'm coming over."
So I got my nine millimeter and I sat in this car,
and you know, with a tarp on it, with a little crack on it,
waiting for somebody to pull up.
I never fired a gun at somebody else.
But I wasn't about to get, you know, killed at my own house.
Pete shows up and I let him get out. I let him go to my front door.
And I come up behind him, and I was like,
"Pete." He was like, "Oh, there you are.
Put that gun away, you don't need it. Let's go inside."
I go inside and I'm like,
"What the fuck's going on? Somebody's gonna kill me now?"
He's like, "What are you doing with the story?"
And I told him, I said, "Look, I want my money."
And he goes, "No, what do you want?"
And I go, "I just want my money back, Pete."
"I'm asking you one more time, what do you want?"
I said, "I want that motherfucker to pay.
I want the motherfucker to pay for stealing from me."
He goes, "We'll make that happen. We'll make sure he gets his.
But for right now, all you want is your money."
I said, "I just want my money." He goes, "I'll make that happen.
But I need those books."
I said, "Okay." He goes, "I'll take care of it.
I'll take care of all this whole thing."
So I got the four books and I turn around and handed them to Pete.
There was no reason for me to hang on to these books anymore.
Tim already has this information.
I kinda thought that the longer I had these in my possession,
the more danger I was in.
Ugi goes to Alex and says, "Give me $10,000."
And Alex goes, "I thought it was only $4,000, $5,000."
He says, "Give me $10,000. I... I could work with $10,000."
[Fischer] The next day, Pete calls me and says,
"Hey, can you meet me at the salon?"
And he hands me $4,000.
And I'm like, "Well, I'm only owed $3,600."
And he goes, "Ah, keep the $400 for your troubles."
And I'm like, "Okay. Well, did you give him the books?"
He's like, "No."
"Well, what did you do with them?" "I gave them to A-Rod's people."
That's when I was like...
A-Rod's involved... And I was like, "How the fuck do you know A-Rod?
How is A-Rod involved in this?"
They took the books and instead of bringing it to me,
they took it to A-Rod. They figured,
A-Rod owns the books now, 'cause he paid the $10,000.
I said, "All right, great.
I'll go to A-Rod and he's gonna have to give me the books."
And so Alex never gave me the books.
That's the first time Pete had ever said the word A-Rod to me.
That's the first time that I realized that
A-Rod, or his people,
were kind of puppeteering Ugi, or Pete, or Bosch.
[Bosch] Alex always surrounded himself
with some shady characters, as far as his personal life is concerned.
He grew up in Miami. It's a Miami thing, I guess.
[Fischer] Pete calls me and says, "Look, no bullshit. I need to ask you...
Is this story going on or not?"
Well, I asked the story to be stopped.
Porter never asked me to kill the story or stop it from running.
He knew it was gonna publish in a few days,
he knew it was gonna be on the cover of Miami New Times
on tens of thousands of papers, all over the city.
He knew it was going to be on the Internet
and he knew everything that was gonna be in the story.
I know the story's not dead, but I'm not gonna tell him that,
because now, I'm freaked out. What am I...
I have no friends in this situation.
Pete says, "Just stay low. You did the right thing.
You're a hero."
The next day is Tuesday.
And I get a call from Pete.
"Well, all the shit's hit the fan.
The story's out." And I go, "What do they know?"
And he goes, "Everything."
[Elfrink] The story just exploded.
[newscaster] A developing story here on SportsCenter.
The names of some prominent baseball players
including Alex Rodriguez, Melky Cabrera and Gio Gonzalez
were included in records that the Miami New Times says
it obtained from an employee who worked at Biogenesis of America.
We knew the New Times story was coming out.
And so, yeah, we closed before.
Anthony Bosch, the head of the clinic, which closed last month,
was connected to Manny Ramirez
when Ramirez was suspended for 50 games
for violating baseball's drug policy in 2009.
Bosch has never been charged by local or federal officials.
Miami New Times, which conducted a three-month investigation,
reported that the records show the firm sold performance-enhancing drugs,
including human growth hormone,
testosterone and anabolic steroids.
[reporter] Baseball's latest doping scandal
could turn out to be the biggest ever in sports.
I realized when this was happening that
"Oh, I really stepped in it this time."
Oh, shit, you know. Uh...
Okay, I'm in trouble here.
I felt like Ray Liotta at the end of Goodfellas.
You know, while he is driving around,
all coked out and the helicopter was following him.
So I felt like that, without the helicopter.
You know, so... [laughs]
It's crazy. Now, I understand when celebrities or whatever
say they can't leave their house 'cause they get harassed.
Guys basically started chasing down all my friends,
anybody associated with me, or linked to me.
[reporter] We tried tracking Bosch down at a hotel
in Coconut Grove, Miami.
No luck approaching a car connected to Bosch either.
Do we have any sort of comment at all from Mr. Bosch?
So I kept on moving around from place to place.
I spent a majority of my time after that just dodging people.
I would get calls saying, "Hey, people were coming by
looking for you at the salon."
Pete said, "Oh, you have no idea what you've done.
You screwed people over, you've ruined people's lives.
How could you do this? You're a piece of shit."
And I'm like, "Whose lives did I ruin?"
"You know what? I'm done with you. I'm done with you.
You know, you're lucky I don't fuck you up."
Porter had basically gone into a complete panic
after the story ran.
He was concerned that his life was in danger
and he was right.
[Bosch] It wasn't just the athletes,
it wasn't just the steroid dealers,
it was the Carbones from the tanning salon.
It was the connections the steroid dealer might have had,
whether it had been some kind of organized crime.
It was relatives or fans of some of these athletes.
It's not as crazy as it sounds.
When you start to realize the scope of the story
and that there were prominent people that weren't athletes
from Miami going to this place as well.
Police officers, judges,
so I basically shut down and I was paranoid of everybody.
He's lucky he's not in a canal anywhere right now.
He decided he needed to get out of town
and he took all of the records with him.
[Fischer] I packed up some boxes,
brought them to Ocala and put them in a storage up there.
[reporter] Rodriguez has retained noted Defense Counsel Roy Black.
He's also retained a PR firm
and they had this statement issued today on his behalf.
[reading]
[Bosch] Shortly after the New Times story,
Yahoo Sports came out with their own story,
almost as a follow up.
All of a sudden, there was new names coming out
and marquee name on there was Ryan Braun.
[reporter] Braun is listed with other players
identified as clients of Biogenesis,
the shuttered Coral Gables clinic
at the heart of a widening Major League Baseball doping scandal.
It later emerged that
the name was leaked by Alex Rodriguez's camp.
His idea was that the more people involved in the scandal,
the less heat would be on him.
[Bosch] It wasn't only Ryan Braun on there,
there was also Francisco Cervelli, a teammate of Alex.
And you know, that sucks
that your own teammate throws you out there
just to get the focus off of him, you know.
The highest paid player in baseball history
throwing this $500,000-a-year ball player under the bus.
Everybody was out for themselves,
everybody was out to protect themselves.
[woman speaking foreign language]
[man grunts]
[grunts]
[woman continues]
[Fischer] When the story broke, that's when I expected
somebody to knock on my door in law enforcement.
Whether it be Coral Gables Police Department,
Miami Police Department, DEA, somebody.
And nobody came.
And I was getting frustrated, because I was like,
"Does anybody not care about this?"
[Elfrink] He invited me to come talk to him at his house
in South Miami.
At the time, Porter was living in a guest house
behind the house he grew up in.
When I found him there,
he was drinking heavily, Kool-Aid and vodka from a big plastic cup.
His apartment was a mess.
He had a big statue of the Incredible Hulk.
As I sat down, I noticed he had a gun out on the table, too.
Tim says somebody in law enforcement,
code enforcement called.
And I was like, "What?" and I go "Who is it?"
And he goes, "The Department of Health."
And I was like, "Department of Health?"
You know, don't they give tickets to restaurants for dirty bathrooms?
I thought, in short order, that I would be able to make a case against Anthony Bosch
if I had cooperation from a couple of individuals.
[Fischer] Detective Hill, he was a narcotics officer in Baltimore.
I didn't know why he switched to the Florida Department of Health.
When I asked, and he finally told me, he told me that he got into a disagreement
with his supervisors.
[reporter] Baltimore City Police set up a sting
to catch one of their own.
The target, 35-year-old Jerome Hill, a four-year Southeast veteran.
They have gotten calls saying the cop was taking people's money.
[Elfrink] Like so many characters in Florida,
Jerome Hill had ended up here
after running into some legal troubles out of state.
The officer who's the target of the investigation
assaulted the undercover DEA officer.
[reporter continues] Attacked by his fellow officer,
the cop then handcuffed Hill.
He is now charged with second degree assault.
Jerome Hill had read our story
and his job was to investigate
unlicensed physicians and pharmacies.
[Fischer] The first time we met face to face
was at a Hooters.
[Hill] I told him, "I just don't give a fuck about Major League Baseball
and everything that goes on."
[Fischer] He's like, "I don't care about ball players.
I'm all about physicians, fake physicians
and pharmacies, and drugs,
and protecting people and their kids."
Okay, finally, somebody sees the big picture
of what this is really about.
Tony Bosch has been around this scene for a lot of years.
He tells people that he is a doctor. He is not a medical doctor.
You know, one of the things that has bothered me the most
has been the marginalization
of myself as a person and of my work.
They talked about, you know, being a fraudulent doctor,
being a fake doctor.
-[woman] The fake doctor-- -[man 1] The phony doctor--
[man 2] A quote-unquote "fake doctor..."
[Bosch] Fake and unlicensed are two different things.
The way I look at a fake doctor is,
you wake up in the morning, you're a baker,
and all of a sudden, you want to be a doctor today,
and you hang a fake diploma there because,
you know, of course, any printer in Miami will print you a real diploma.
You know, and so, uh...
[stammering] You put a diploma on the wall,
and start calling yourself a doctor.
That to me is a fake doctor.
An unlicensed physician
is a physician who studied,
who did their clinical clerkships,
because if not, you couldn't have graduated from medical school.
Okay, who might have done their residency in another country
but cannot acquire his license here for one reason or another.
You know what I say about that? "Fuck out of here with that."
You know, you can go ahead and tell Bobo the Clown about that.
But you're not telling me that.
Fraud is basically the unofficial state business of Florida.
You know, there's 80 to 100 billion dollars in fraud
and improper payments in Medicare a year.
Ten to 15% of the program.
Isn't that Florida's... Isn't that Florida's whole economy?
Well, part of it. A lot of it comes from Dade County.
That's became even more true in recent years,
thanks to Florida Governor Rick Scott.
Before getting into politics, Scott actually ran a company
that committed the largest Medicare fraud in history.
In one deposition, he pleaded the Fifth 75 times.
-[interviewer] What's your question? -I don't recall. I wouldn't know.
I'm not sure I understand.
-You can't answer that question? -No.
[Elfrink] Shockingly enough, Scott was not super excited about
cracking down on fraudulent doctors and medical industry in the state.
South Florida man arrested accused of practicing bad medicine.
Officers say Jose Ramirez represented himself as a doctor.
[reporter 2] Samir El Charif promotes himself
as a beauty, cosmetic and personal care doctor.
The police say he's a fake.
[reporter 3] A transgender woman playing doctor
injecting substances meant to fix a flat tire
into a woman's bottom.
[reporter 4] Schreiber met this patient,
a 55-year-old man, in February at a Hialeah warehouse.
The patient alleges that his penis was mutilated.
[reporter 5] Police in South Florida said they are seeing more of these cases,
primarily in the Latin community,
and they hope arrests like this one will make the public more aware
that a shingle outside the door is not always a guarantee
that a real doctor is inside.
[speaking halting Spanish]
[reporter] In South Florida,
there are ton of these anti-aging clinics, longevity centers.
They have a lot of different names
and baseball has been looking into this for months.
But even if they got their hands on the evidence that the New Times cites,
that wouldn't be enough. You'd need somebody to swear an affidavit
to that evidence and say, "Yes, this is true and accurate."
Essentially, you'd need Tony Bosch,
the guy who is believed to be at the center of this.
[Elfrink] After the steroid era ended,
Major League Baseball created their own department of investigations.
This isn't something most fans know about,
but, it's essentially almost an internal FBI for Major League Baseball.
This department is mostly staffed by former cops,
primarily cops from New York and Boston.
[Bosch] MLB sent a bunch of investigators down here to Miami.
[Hill] The truth in the matter is is they ran roughshod in South Florida.
They were using every strategy.
Paying people off for information.
There was one Major League Baseball investigator
that bought shoes for my girlfriend.
And then he sent flowers,
so he could, obviously, get to me.
But I was laughing. I was going, "Great."
You know, "I'm gonna send you a laundry list,
so you can do my shopping, too," basically, is what I thought.
But I said, "Honey, don't worry about it.
Let them keep on sending shit."
The investigation really took some pretty incredibly silly turns.
It was just an absolute clown show on the ground.
Investigators sleeping with witnesses.
[Elfrink] At one point, Dan Mullin, the lead investigator,
ended up having an affair
with a former nurse from Tony Bosch's clinic.
Congratulations, MLB. It looks like you are doing a fantastic, bang-up job.
[laughing] Biogenesis was better than Tinder.
You had to know that doing all that type of shenanigans,
that it was going to compromise anybody's investigation.
One day, there's a knock at my door,
and I opened up the door and there's two guys standing there.
"Are you Porter?" And I was like, "Well, who's asking?"
And they're like, "We're with MLB. Detective Reilly and Maldonado."
"I have no comment. I don't want to talk to you guys."
And he was like, "What do you want? What would make you feel better?"
As a joke, I said, "You know what,
hey, I'd love a tanning salon and a house in Central Florida."
"Is that what you want? Is that what you'd like?
We can make that happen. Would you talk to us?"
And I'm thinking to myself,
"These guys really wanna talk to me really, really bad."
And they turned around and handed me an envelope, and I open it up.
And there's a lot of money in there. It's five grand.
"This is for your help, and there's more of that to come."
I agree to meet Reilly again.
So I met him at Deering Estate,
which is a park down south of me, on Old Cutler.
And he's like, "Is it okay if you talk to my boss?"
And I said, "Well, I haven't figured all that out yet, I'm really not sure."
And he goes, "Well, he's here."
They were basically hiding in the bushes, waiting for me to show up.
Around the corner, walking down the row is Dan Mullin.
"I thought a lot about what's going on
and we'd like to make you an employee of MLB."
And I was like, "For what?"
"To assist us." I go, "Assist you picking up
baseballs at the park?" I mean...
He was like, "Oh, you could help us decipher the documents,
and you could also go to other clinics,
infiltrate those and see if there's any other things we should know about."
[scoffs] "Are you crazy?
Do you realize I'm burned in this town?"
He said, "Well, what do you want?" I said,
"Well, I don't want to be your employee
and this stuff's worth way more than ten grand."
I didn't like the way MLB was dealing with me, number one.
The information I wanted,
I already used the information, I already gave it to the Miami New Times.
It was already out there.
Why MLB wanted it?
I don't know. To cover your ass?
To hide stuff? I don't know.
Were you embarrassed that your anti-doping program
is nothing but a sham? You know, I don't know.
But you're trying to push me and force me into giving you information.
And who the fuck are you?
You're a private organization. You're MLB.
You're a fucking sport! You're not the law.
[Hill] This was not a law enforcement entity.
[scoffs] It's Major League Baseball.
[Fischer] The main attorney for MLB said,
"Hey, we're willing to offer you a total of $125,000
for your documents."
So I turned them down. I said, "No, it's not worth it."
He said that there were other parties that were offering the same information.
And I thought he was bluffing.
And I was like, "Fine, go ahead. Get it from them."
I don't want to end up with my head floating in a canal somewhere.
[Hill] I told Porter Fischer that I needed patient records
that were involved in this clinic.
I felt as though we had more than enough evidence for probable cause.
But I needed those records.
I needed them as soon as yesterday.
He let me know that it was up in Ocala, Florida.
[Fischer] He goes, "Go get them.
You're a witness for the state of Florida for the Department of Health.
We're gonna proceed with this."
And I'd stopped off at Boca Tanning Club in Boca Raton
on the way up to Ocala.
I came by there and tanned, just like any other normal visit.
Gary was like, "Where are you going?" I said, "I'm going up to Ocala."
And he's like, "What are you going up there for?"
And I said, "I'm picking up some more of these documents.
I got to turn them in for the Department of Health."
Gary Jones is the technician that works for the Carbones,
that does service on the tanning beds.
I mean, I was there all the time and I came to know Gary
just like I would know Pete and Anthony.
I was like, "Oh, is that... Did you go to tech school for that?"
And he goes, "Yeah, I did. When I got out of prison."
[Elfrink] Gary Jones is, by any definition, a career criminal.
He had spent years in the '70s and '80s
making a living counterfeiting US currency.
He became one of the major counterfeiters on the east coast.
He eventually got caught, he served two years in prison.
And, like so many people in this story,
ended up trying to make a new life for himself in Florida.
Down here, I mean, you don't walk around and people say hi.
You don't say, "Hi, what's your name? What's your phone number?
Have you ever spent time in jail?"
You know, if you had to cut everybody off,
for any mistakes you've ever made in the past,
nobody would be talking to anybody.
Porter Fischer, God love him, is a natural-born sucker.
He's somebody that's really willing to trust people.
He's always looking for a friend.
And at this point in his life,
he actually had something really valuable.
He had these records tied to this major scandal
that everybody wanted a piece of.
Gary Jones can smell a sucker from a mile away.
[Fischer] I went up to Ocala to go get boxes in storage.
Well, Sunday morning he calls me up,
he's like, "Hey, what are you doing?" I said, "I'm driving back down now."
"You got to stop by the salon on the way down, I'll meet you there.
I got his new solution, you're gonna love it.
I'm thinking about making this myself,
and I want you to be part of this," so-and-so...
"You know all about tanning." And Porter this, Porter that.
And pushed all the right buttons, and it's something I enjoy doing.
So I said, "Okay, I'll be there."
He goes, "What time are you gonna be here?"
I said, "I don't know. 12:30, 1:00, somewhere around there."
And I parked in the back, right next to where Anthony was parked,
and where Gary was parked.
Gary's there, Anthony's there.
"Good seeing you," so on and so forth, fist bump,
and Anthony's leaving.
I walk around up to the front of the store with Gary,
"You're gonna go to the Department of Health?"
I said, "Yeah," you know.
"I had to go pick up documents and stuff, I gotta put an end to this."
He said, "Oh, okay. Well, go on in there, go try the solution."
He walks me in, just like normal.
So I go in there, and I get the spray tan.
I'm in there for ten minutes or so.
I come back out and Gary's in the lobby.
"Hey, yo, how does it smell? Oh, the color looks fantastic.
Hey, how did... Doesn't the color look fantastic?" Blah, blah.
"Hey, you know what? That's great. I'm gonna go give it a try."
So he walks back.
Got my shoes on and I'm walking out to my car.
And I see my door's open, and my trunk is open.
And glass all over the place.
"Is that my car?"
Everything's gone.
So I go running back into the salon,
and I yell at the girl, I said, "Call 911. Call 911."
I went back to the room and I'm banging on the door.
I'm like, "Gary, get out here, I've been robbed."
And he's like, "What?" I'm like, "Get out here, I've been robbed.
Somebody broke into my car and took all my shit. Took everything."
He walks up to his van and his window's smashed in.
And he's like, "Ah! Oh, my God! Oh, my God, they broke into my car, too."
So on and so forth.
Anthony comes up, "Oh, you know, what happened?
Oh, somebody broke into the car?"
And I'm saying, "Hey, is there any cameras?
Is there any cameras back here? Is there any cameras back here?"
They're like, "No, no, no."
The cop shows up,
I'm jumping up and down, I'm telling the cop,
"Look, they took everything, they took everything."
And he's like, "Calm down."
And I'm like, "They took evidence. They took state's evidence
for a criminal case."
He's like, "Whoa, what are you talking about?"
I go, "Biogenesis. Biogenesis. Baseball. Alex.
You know what I'm talking about? A-Rod."
And I turned and got my phone and I call up Detective Hill.
[Hill] He explained to me that his car got broken into
and his records, everything that I had asked for,
was stolen from his vehicle.
[Fischer] I said, "I'm here in front of a cop,
and I'm freaking out
and I think the cop is looking at me like what's this crazy guy talking about?"
Who in the world steals other people's medical files?
How in the world could this happen? Was it MLB? Was it Alex's people?
Was it Bosch's people?
How did this happen?
I didn't know how anybody would know that I had boxes in Ocala.
How anybody would know where I was.
And I was thinking, "Is my car bugged?
Is my phone bugged?"
"What about your friends?"
And I'm like, "There's no way. How would they know?
How would they orchestrate this?
Who... Gary was there when I went in.
He... He was tanning right there." You know...
And I turn around and look at a little mark
next to the passenger side, where the key is, where the handle is.
And I said to the CSI person, I said, "Is that blood?"
And she looks at it and she goes, "Sure is."
[camera clicking]
I got a call from the Boca Police Department.
[man over phone] "Do you know a Reginald St. Fleur?"
[Fischer] "Reginald St... You mean Reggie?"
Reggie St. Fleur was just a gofer.
Reggie would hand out flyers at Boca Tanning Club,
he would change light bulbs.
And I'm like, "Yeah, I know him."
[man over phone] "Okay, because we just got back the DNA match,
and it matches Reginald."
[Fischer] Automatically, I was like,
"I just... I just got screwed. I just got screwed bad."
I was played, I was played by Gary. I was played by Anthony.
So it was you guys.
Porter had only told one person
that he was driving to Ocala to get these files
and coming back down, and that was Gary Jones.
[Fischer] And when you look who hired Reginald Fleur's lawyer...
Well, it was the Carbones.
[reporter] Reginald St. Fleur, he's facing a charge of armed burglary
after he broke into a car
parked at a Boca Raton tanning salon in March.
The car belonged to the man who blew the whistle
on the Miami Biogenesis clinic
where more than a dozen athletes
were allegedly given performance-enhancing drugs.
Inside the car, the documents that led to the national scandal.
What I told Major League Baseball investigator Dominguez
was that Porter Fischer's car was just broken into,
and they contained a plethora of patient files
that were being turned over to the state.
If you were to get any of those files,
you are to notify the state immediately upon receiving those files,
as part of a state investigation.
I don't know how much more clearer I could be.
Porter Fischer had no idea,
but the same guys that he had decided to trust
in his tanning salon crew,
were essentially an organized crime ring
that had realized they had two sets of patsies
they could play off each other
in Alex Rodriguez and Major League Baseball.
And they set out to make as much money as they possibly can from this thing.
The Carbones had already sold the original notebooks
to Alex Rodriguez.
But unbeknownst to A-Rod,
Pete actually had another copy of these.
Porter Fischer had given him a flash drive with scans of all of these notebooks.
So next, they approached Major League Baseball,
which was desperate to get this information.
[Rob Manfred] We got a call from a gentleman
who identified himself only as Bobby.
And said he had the Biogenesis documents
and offered to make an agreement with us to get those documents.
Make an agreement? He offered to sell them to you?
That's correct. That's correct.
-He offered... -And you offered to buy them?
He offered to sell them and we bought them.
-How much? -$100,000.
[Elfrink] Major League Baseball is handing over $100,000 cash
to a convicted felon in a diner,
to get stolen documents from a clinic.
Unbeknownst to each other,
there are two different patrons at side tables
secretly filming the entire operation.
One of them is Anthony Carbone,
who knows there could be some profit from Alex Rodriguez
if he has tape of this, obviously,
very shady transaction happening.
On the other table is a Major League Baseball official filming.
Gary and the Carbones weren't finished though.
Major League Baseball had told Gary Jones,
"If you can get us hard copies, not just scans,
there's even more money in this for you."
So then I thought, "Oh, okay, that's why Gary orchestrated the break-in,
to get paid again on top of this."
Then there was a second purchase for $25,000.
[Bosch] I still don't know who Gary Jones is.
But he had made the most money out of this whole thing.
I mean, it's just amazing.
[Fischer] My lawyer talked to Bob Manfred.
Rob Manfred was the second-in-command right behind Bud Selig at MLB.
"A lot of the fingers are pointing to you as being responsible for this break-in
and the disappearance of this evidence."
Bob Manfred said, "Well, look.
We sure didn't have anything to do with the break-in,
but we know who did."
[Elfrink] Major League Baseball had to know that these files
had been stolen amidst a criminal investigation
by Jerome Hill and the state.
And yet, no one was ever charged except for Reggie St. Fleur,
the absolute lowest level on the totem pole
who actually broke into the car.
[Hill] Make no mistake,
someone in Major League Baseball should've been arrested and charged.
It's hard to draw any other conclusions
except that the local police force didn't really have any interest
in trying to bring a case that could end up
involving Major League Baseball.
You know, I'm getting dragged into court, I'm by myself,
I have no friends. Major League Baseball's pushing me around.
I feel very unappreciated.
None of this would be happening if it wasn't for me.
Where's my thank you? Where's my cupcake, you know?
[interviewer] What has it been like, in those months since your name came out?
[Bosch] I don't have any friends anymore.
I don't go to the same locations I used to go to.
My blinds are closed all the time.
I have a concealed weapons permit, and now I continually carry a weapon.
It's not what I expected. It's not what I got involved for.
[Elfrink] For every sleazy thing Major League Baseball did in South Florida,
trying to pay witnesses, threatening people to cooperate,
A-Rod and his crew were doing almost the exact same thing.
[Bosch] Alex was the first one to reach out.
A-Rod's people tried to make the case to Tony
that they could keep him safe, that they could pay his bills.
They talked about sending him down to Colombia to lay low.
[Bosch] They offered to pay my attorney.
Basically, to keep me quiet, type of deal.
So the idea was for both legal teams to work together
to try to fend off this Major League Baseball investigation.
His team paid $25,000, I believe.
But there was always something behind all his offers.
They had some type of angle that worked in his favor and not in mine.
[Elfrink] He did everything he could to obstruct this investigation
and to try to keep Tony Bosch out of Major League Baseball's hands.
Rock bottom for me in 2013 was basically me. The end of me.
[Elfrink] He'd been dodging MLB and A-Rod for months.
His only source of income,
Biogenesis and the steroid sales, had obviously disappeared.
He had mounting legal costs.
[Bosch] And I had a child support hearing to try to reduce the child support
and I had to fill out a financial affidavit.
And I think what I told my attorney was,
"You know, what do I put here? 'Cause I don't have...
I don't have any money."
I was broke.
The DEA was investigating.
The state was investigating.
MLB was investigating.
[chuckling] A-Rod's people were investigating.
And I was facing possible jail time from the state.
I realized that the roof was caving in on me.
I think the best strategy is to align myself
with a powerful ally,
so I could, you know, so I could basically face the music.
And that's when I decided to do an interview with Pedro Gomez
on ESPN.
We have mutual friends, very strong mutual friends.
Pedro Gomez is from Miami, he went to Coral Park High.
[Gomez] You always hear about six degrees of separation
from Kevin Bacon.
In Miami, it's probably one degree of separation from anybody.
And especially in the Cuban community,
especially people that grew up in the '80s.
Pedro was one of the few guys that I trusted at that time.
He was my therapist, he was my, you know,
he was my drinking buddy.
I kind of had the idea that he was shopping
to get an offer.
[Bosch] Pedro suggested, you know, "You're a mess.
You're gonna be dead by the time this thing blows over.
I think you should call Manfred and see if you guys could set up
some type of deal and put this thing to rest."
I said, "Listen, you get the interview, and I get the message out."
That interview with Pedro Gomez was at Monty's in Coconut Grove.
You know, the bar that's right behind me here,
is where he was sitting.
I just told him to stand out there and I'll come out in a second.
We were waiting out here.
[Bosch] I had a few drinks. I was coming out, I was with my attorney.
I said, "Might as well just get this done and over with," so...
[Elfrink] ESPN cameras actually catch him walking from the bar,
apparently after doing a solid degree of day drinking.
Who knows if he had even gone to sleep? [laughs]
Well, thanks for stopping for a few questions.
Some of the things they've said is that you supplied
performance-enhancing drugs.
-What's your reaction to that? -No comment.
I'm a nutritionist.
I don't know anything about performance-enhancing drugs.
I had no idea what I was saying in that interview,
to be quite honest with you.
Manny Ramirez was a client of yours in 2009.
He tested positive with a prescription that was signed by your father,
a doctor here in Miami.
Allegedly. That's untrue.
That your father's a doctor, or that he signed...
My father is a licensed physician--
-Yes. -In the state of Florida.
Probably the sweatiest, worst interview in live television history.
There's other players that have been reportedly linked to Biogenesis.
Braun. Melky Cabrera. Bartolo Colon. Yasmani Grandal.
And they've all tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
What can you tell us about that?
You're asking the wrong individual.
You're gonna have to ask their trainers or handlers.
I have no comment.
-[Gomez] Alex Rodriguez. -Like I said, no comment.
But, you know what, I got the message.
It's Major League Baseball.
We know that Major League Baseball has been combing through South Florida,
and an open investigation is underway.
What would it take for you to cooperate
with Major League Baseball's investigators?
I've always been here, Pedro.
Have they reached out to you?
Not that I know of.
They haven't reached out to my attorneys. They haven't reached out to me.
I'll cooperate, but there's no...
Nobody's reached out to me.
[Elfrink] That was basically putting up the Bat-Signal to Bud Selig.
This guy was ready to turn snitch.
All they had to do was give him a call.
[Gomez] Tony, thank you for your time.
-Pedro, thanks. -Okay.
[Bosch] About 15 minutes after,
I know Major League Baseball contacted my attorney.
And so we set up an interview
and that's when I started working with Major League Baseball.
It was easy to make that decision.
Who do I go with, Alex or Major League Baseball?
With Alex, if I would've aligned myself with Alex,
you know, it would've been all lies.
At the end of the day,
he's definitely an eccentric multimillionaire
but, you know,
Major League Baseball is an eccentric multi-billionaire.
[reporter] What is Tony Bosch's motivation here
for cooperating with MLB?
[chuckles] It's probably self-preservation.
[Bosch] And so they got what they wanted. They won.
The other shoe is about to drop in the baseball drug scandal.
[reporter 2] Major League Baseball is poised to announce suspensions
that will make history and shake the game.
It includes some of the game's superstars right at the top.
Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees.
The highest-paid player in the history of baseball
might be one step away from losing it all.
[reporter 3] His fate could rest in the hands
of baseball's commissioner Bud Selig,
who according to some experts,
will attempt to take him off the field this season,
one way or another.
There was talk about him facing a lifetime ban.
Like my hero, Pete Rose.
[reporter continues] It'd be one of the heaviest penalties
since Pete Rose was banned from the game 24 years ago,
for betting on his own team.
[Bosch] You realize that at the end of the day,
it wasn't even about PEDs at this point in time.
It was about... It was a war of legacy.
You know, Selig trying to preserve his legacy
and Alex trying to preserve his.
[Gomez] Bud Selig will forever be known as the commissioner
that was in charge during the entire steroid era.
You know, when guys were hitting 50, 60, 70 home runs.
That all came on his watch.
[Elfrink] Alex Rodriguez, more than any other player,
had made a complete mockery
of baseball's crackdown on performance-enhancing drugs.
He'd been caught multiple times before.
He'd blatantly lied on national television.
I think that really fueled
the extent baseball was willing to do almost anything,
to get A-Rod.
Good evening. It's the most sweeping punishment
to hit Major League Baseball, the American pastime,
since the Chicago Black Sox Shoeless Joe Jackson scandal
almost a century ago.
Thirteen players have been swept up and punished
for performance-enhancing drugs.
And at the top of the list of those suspended,
Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, A-Rod.
His suspension's for 211 games,
reminder of this season, all of the next,
all for the use and possession of performance-enhancing drugs,
and allegedly acting to cover it up and hamper the investigation.
I thought it was the beginning of the end, but it wasn't.
Only one of those players ended up appealing their suspension.
Alex Rodriguez.
He promised to fight to the bitter end,
proclaimed his innocence
and said he would beat Bud Selig in arbitration.
[Bosch] Even after a suspension,
I mean, he basically said,
"No, fuck you, I'm not suspended," and he kept on playing.
[laughs] He played that night in Chicago and he got booed.
[commentator] With a 211-game suspension hanging over his head,
that he is going to appeal,
Alex Rodriguez, about to take his first at-bat of the season.
So why don't you listen to the reception he'll get from the crowd.
[announcer] ...the third baseman, number 13, Alex Rodriguez.
[crowd booing]
[Bosch] I remember when he went to go play Boston.
[commentator] He hears a whole lot of booing,
from the fans here at Fenway.
[Bosch] Everybody was talking about it. "Which pitcher's gonna...
You know, who's gonna hit him?"
I think the Boston Red Sox
put Ryan Dempster on that mound specifically for that.
I said, "Oh, for sure, Dempster, for sure."
He's gonna go straight for the head.
[commentator 1] And that one inside, it almost hit him.
[commentator 2] I had a feeling that was coming.
[Bosch] We were betting on, "Is it gonna be the first pitch,
or the second pitch or the third pitch?"
[commentator 1] Inside, he hit him.
[commentator 2] Had your chance, the first pitch, to send a message.
Don't send it on the fourth one.
-[interviewer speaking] -[Rodriguez] Who?
I'm the wrong guy to be asking about suspension.
[reporters laughing]
[reporter] MLB's case centers on this man. Anthony Bosch.
[Fischer] They had to, basically, clean him up
and make him as presentable as they possibly could
for any jury or any media that was gonna say,
"Why would you sidle up with this guy?
How dependable is this guy? How credible is this guy?"
'Cause you know that's the route that Alex was gonna take.
"Why would you believe MLB siding with this guy?"
He's a scumbag. Drug dealer, coke addict,
bum, bad son,
bad father, bad brother, bad everything.
[reporter] Is Bosch prepared to testify that he gave Rodriguez PEDs?
It would be a different account of what he told ESPN last April.
I don't know anything about performance-enhancing drugs.
[reporter continues] That was then. One of Bosch's former friends,
Bobby Miller, suspects why Bosch may have now changed his story.
And he told me that they're paying him $5 million.
That they paid him.
-[interviewer 1] Who's "They"? -Major League Baseball.
[interviewer 2] Alex Rodriguez claims that you paid him,
essentially, $5 million.
There is absolutely no basis for that claim.
It's just absolutely untrue.
I have it right here. I have it, um...
You want me to read it?
"The professional protection, they spent...
$1,456,176.
The law office of Samuel Rabin and the law office of Susy Ribero-Ayala
was $766,000...
The law office of Pinera-Vazquez was $574..."
[indistinct overlapping reading]
I believe that comes out close to about $4 million.
We were about a month away from arbitration. It was my birthday.
And I was in New York.
This whole thing was very stressful to me.
You know, an arbitration. I've never been to an arbitration.
So not only do I need a bottle here, I need something else beside a bottle.
[chuckling] And I take a bump.
The birthday dinner turned into an all-night party.
Drugs everywhere, paraphernalia.
We had to bring in a cleaner to clean up the mess. [laughs]
Well, Major League Baseball freaked out.
It's like, here's our star witness and the guy, you know... [laughs]
He's partying like a rock star.
Not like a rock star, a whole rock band.
And in a way, you could say, MLB paid for his coke habit.
He's a sleazy drug dealer. It's his word against A-Rod's word.
We can't dismiss Bosch when there's a lot of evidence.
Meaning other individuals that got caught because of him, too.
[Bosch] The first day I got there, there was a huge crowd outside,
in front of Major League Baseball, their offices in Park Avenue.
[chanting] A-Rod.
[Bosch] I remember there was signs like, "Tony Bosch, drug dealer."
[Elfrink] If you looked a little closer, the protest was sort of strange.
[Bosch] And I started seeing the same people with the same sign.
Then I started noticing that the signs were written with the same handwriting.
[Elfrink] They had sort of weird messages like,
"Bosch is a liar," and "Fire Selig."
That just seems like it would be hard to believe a fan had put this together.
[Bosch] It turned out that Alex had hired all these people
to stand outside with these signs,
and the payment was gonna be pizza.
Some guy said, "Hey, when are they gonna bring us the pizza?"
You know, "We're here because of pizza."
[reporter] Arbitrator Fredric Horowitz will hear both sides.
[Bosch] I was anxious, and I was nervous.
You know, I've never been through anything like this in my life.
I had nothing to relate...
I didn't know what the hell to expect.
My attorney, he said, "You know what, why don't you do something?
Just stick with the truth."
I thought he was gonna come up with something better than that.
[Gomez] Tony Bosch provided far more than baseball expected.
Texts, E-mails, phone records, voicemails,
establishing what baseball believes they can prove
was a long-standing relationship where Bosch treated A-Rod,
would go to his home to inject him,
and his efforts to obstruct this investigation.
[Bosch] I remember sitting in front of Alex.
He would make faces, funny faces, and he would try to make me laugh.
He would go like this to me, like this,
and then, you know, like, trying to play peekaboo.
You know, like if you were five years old.
You know, there was a point in time where I had to laugh.
And then the arbitrator even told him, he goes, "What are you doing?"
And he says, "Yeah, what? I'm not doing anything."
If he wasn't a multimillionaire, you'd call him crazy,
but, you know, we'll call him eccentric for now.
[reporter] As Alex Rodriguez fights his unprecedented PED ban
from Major League Baseball,
his hearing continues in New York.
His attorneys today opened a broadside against MLB, filing suit.
Among the allegations, Baseball is practicing vigilante justice.
That Baseball investigators paid an unnamed person $150,000
for documents stolen from a former employee
of the Biogenesis lab.
Documents used against Rodriguez to suspend him.
[Bosch] That following Monday, I think the script flipped,
and then they were questioning Alex.
He couldn't answer the questions. Obviously, he was guilty as sin.
Almost like a little kid, "I don't wanna talk about that!"
He kicked the lawyer's briefcase
and told Manfred that he was full of shit,
and he's not answering these lies and these ridiculous questions.
[reporter] Rodriguez stormed out, with a parting comment to Rob Manfred.
He said to me, "Rob, this is, um, BS, and you know it."
[Bosch] And he takes off, jumps in his car,
and has his driver take him down to the radio station.
[radio interviewer] A-Rod, tell me what happened today?
I lost my mind, I banged a table and kicked... [chuckles]
...a briefcase and slammed out of the room
and just felt like this system... I knew it was restricted
and I knew it wasn't fair,
but what we saw today, it was disgusting.
If I gave Bosch $5 million, he would say whatever I want, too.
[radio interviewer] Did you do anything that they accused you of doing?
-No. Nothing. -Nothing?
[Rodriguez] This is my whole life. My legacy. I'm part of history.
So if you're gonna try to destroy all of that,
I'm saying no.
You tell me why I should serve one inning.
[Bosch] And I even said to myself, "What a shame
that it had to come down to this." You know?
He's out. A record suspension tonight for baseball star Alex Rodriguez,
the long fall for the one-time golden boy of baseball,
the highest-paid player in the sport.
The suspension was reduced to 162 games
down from the 211 originally given by commissioner Bud Selig.
[reporter 1] He could've been the Michael Jordan of baseball.
[reporter 2] He pretty much can forget the Hall of Fame.
Who looks worse? A-Rod or Major League Baseball?
Nobody looks worse than A-Rod.
Suspend him? I say fire him.
I think they've had enough of Alex.
-The Yankees are a real team. -A-Rod is real?
Okay, you got me on that one.
-Alex Rodriguez? -Fuck that guy.
[man] You should've shot A-Rod.
My attorneys and I are suing Major League Baseball
for gross misconduct.
We're also suing the player's union for failing trick Major League Baseball.
Um, I'm also suing steroids for being inside of me.
[audience laughing]
And, uh, I'm suing Jackie Robinson for breaking into the major leagues,
which really led to this whole situation in the first place.
[host] Dear Alex Rodriguez,
the game is over. Nobody has your back.
Nobody wants you back.
Not your team, not the players association,
not the fans, no one.
Go back to your mirror,
your centaur painting and your stacks of money,
and never ever let us see you again.
[Bosch] The state attorney investigated,
but they investigated on the child support,
they investigated on the professional licensing situation.
They investigated my clinic.
They investigated, I believe, for insurance,
you know, issues or fraud, or whatever.
And at the end of the day, they didn't find anything.
I couldn't trust the organization I was working with
at that point in time. And I had very good reason to believe that...
Intel that I had, up in Tallahassee, some of the figureheads,
wanted to see this investigation go by the wayside quickly.
I found out through my supervisor
that, "Hey, guess what? You know, this case is over.
You're gonna go ahead and submit what you have..."
And I had a whole bunch of stuff.
"Is that something that y'all..."
He said, "No, they just want something very brief.
Close shop. Let it go."
And that's the thing that, you know, over and over,
you can take a chance here in Florida.
More times than not, it's gonna pay off for you.
And it sure did for Anthony Bosch.
[Bosch] They fined me $5,000
in one of my clinics for not having a licensed physician.
[Hill] From what I understand, they pleaded that down
to some nominal amount,
you know, a slap on the wrist.
And for a time there,
I really thought that, "Okay, great, at least I dodged that bullet."
The jail-time bullet, or, you know, the prison bullet.
But I think that after the 60 Minutes interview,
the feds picked up the case.
Tonight, you are going to hear details of the evidence for the first time.
Much of it from Anthony Bosch,
who ran a secret doping practice for pro athletes.
I was swayed into doing 60 Minutes
and how important it was for Major League Baseball.
I didn't really want to disappoint Major League Baseball.
We had come... You know, we were working together.
I was very good at what I did. I had a track record.
I had been doing this for many years.
If you had the knowledge that I had, the experience that I had,
and you know the truth about the testing and the flaws,
it was almost a cakewalk, actually.
-A cakewalk? -Yeah.
-To beat the system? -To beat the system.
-To cheat? -To cheat.
One year to the day that A-Rod got suspended,
I get arrested by the DEA.
[reporter] Biogenesis founder Tony Bosch has surrendered
to the DEA this morning.
[man] Charges have been filed against Anthony Bosch,
one of the original founders of Biogenesis of America,
and six other individuals for their alleged involvement
in the illegal distribution of performance-enhancing drugs
to minors, to professional athletes, and to others.
Tony Bosch is not a doctor. Tony Bosch is a drug dealer.
[man] In addition to Anthony Bosch,
Jorge "Ugi" Velazquez, a distributor of black market testosterone
and a Bosch supplier.
[Elfrink] Turns out the prosecutors weren't all that interested
in the drugs he sold to Major League Baseball players.
He really ended up taking a fall for all those high schoolers.
The dozens of high school athletes who would come in with their parents
and buy steroids and human growth hormone to try to get ahead
on their school teams.
It was an incredibly dangerous and stupid thing to do.
And that's what Tony Bosch ended up going to federal prison for.
[reporter] Anthony Bosch, the former owner of Biogenesis,
sentenced to four years in federal prison today for his guilty plea,
back in October, to conspiracy to distribute testosterone
to athletes from the now closed clinic in Coral Gables.
I'm very sorry for all the harm that this has caused everybody involved,
my family, my friends.
[speaking Spanish]
[man] Judge Darrin Gayles, in giving Bosch no leniency
for his cooperation with Major League Baseball,
cited the fact that Bosch, in his drug distribution ring,
had injected teenagers with PEDs.
Bosch also had his bail revoked four months ago
after testing positive for cocaine.
The people who were responsible for this,
were they held accountable? Not all of them.
These were people who were fall guys,
as far as I'm concerned, that got arrested.
[camera clicking]
[Gomez] I have a son playing Minor League ball.
If he is going up against roided-out guys,
he is at a distinct disadvantage.
If he's not good enough because the other player is simply better,
that's fine. You can live with that.
But if somebody is roided out and that's why they're succeeding,
and beating you, and all of a sudden,
you're out of the game because your numbers
have suffered because of that, that's wrong.
[Fischer] The fact that University of Miami
didn't even want to address this,
the fact that his name is still on the side of that stadium,
Alex Rodriguez Park,
what message in the world does that send to any student
that goes to that university?
[Bosch] There's a saying that says, "Never meet your heroes
because they'll break your heart."
And I think that's basically what happened.
Yes, I still love the game.
I'll still watch a baseball game,
and I'll coach from my seat at home, you know.
But you know, it took that mystique out.
It took that mystery away.
[Elfrink] In hindsight, it really is incredible
that the biggest steroid scandal in sports history
exploded so quickly over such a tiny amount of money.
I mean, it was really one month's worth of time over $4,000
that sparked this entire thing.
I mean, it's not the most believable story.
But then again, I couldn't... You know, you can't make this shit up.
[boys singing] 'Cause it's one, two, three strikes, you're out
At the old ball game