Navarro Conspirator Oakes Pleads Guilty to PED Use

Suspended harness trainer Chris Oakes, who conspired with Thoroughbred trainer Jorge Navarro to give performance-enhancing drugs to Thoroughbred racehorses, pled guilty in a videoconferenced hearing before U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil Oct. 20. He agreed to a prosecutor-approved sentencing guideline of 36 months in federal prison, the maximum sentence for one count of his crime of drug misbranding, drug alteration, and intent to mislead and defraud.

Vyskocil will determine the precise length in a sentencing hearing scheduled Feb. 16 in the Southern District of New York. Oakes also faces a fine ranging from $20,000 to $200,000 and forfeiture of property gained by his offense totaling $62,821.

Oakes and Navarro were among more than two dozen individuals charged in the horse-doping case, from which numerous convictions have taken place as guilty pleas and have been changed to not guilty over the past few months. Navarro faces up to five years in prison.

Asked to describe his guilty actions Wednesday by Vyskocil, Oakes mentioned purchasing illegal drugs from co-defendants Dr. Seth Fishman, Dr. Gregory Skelton, and Skelton's assistant Ross Cohen. He admitted administering the medications to his horses "to try to gain an unfair advantage." The Pennsylvania-based trainer, 57, said he performed these actions from early 2019 through his arrest in March 2020.

Oakes did not mention Navarro by name in his admissions Wednesday, but U.S. Attorney Andrew Adams told the judge that if the case had gone to trial, the government would have introduced evidence between Oakes and Navarro regarding the distribution and use of misbranded PEDs.

In the government's indictment of Oakes and other defendants, prosecutors noted intercepted communications between Navarro and Oakes in which they conspired to provide Navarro's late sprinter X Y Jet  with PEDs. 

On Feb. 10, 2019, Navarro wrote to Oakes: "Do u have any of that new block that dr makes (?)," and in subsequent calls between Navarro and Oakes, Oakes agreed to procure and deliver the "blocker" PED to Navarro in advance of X Y Jet's Feb. 13 race at Gulfstream Park. The horse won the allowance optional claimer at Gulfstream and later the Dubai Golden Shaheen Sponsored by Gulf News (G1) in Dubai a month later.

In making arrangements to provide the blocker to X Y Jet, Navarro instructed Oakes to lie if necessary to gain access to restricted barn areas.

Prosecutors allege that while under Navarro's care, the horse received erythropoietin, which can cause cardiac issues. Navarro announced in January 2020 that X Y Jet had died from a heart attack.

Gelfenstein Farm owned X Y Jet throughout his 26-race career, and Rockingham Ranch took part ownership of the horse in 2016. David Bernsen assumed a 10% interest of X Y Jet in early December 2019 as part of a partial restructuring and dispersal of horses he owned in partnership with Rockingham Ranch.

Besides telephone intercepts, law enforcement officers found adulterated and misbranded PEDs in Oakes' barn in Pennsylvania, which Adams said the government would have introduced if the case had gone to trial.