MIAMI — The former owner of a Florida medical clinic who posed as a doctor and illegally supplied steroid injections and other performance-enhancing drugs to professional baseball players and even high school athletes was sentenced Tuesday to four years in federal prison.
Anthony Bosch — who choked back tears in court and said the clinic was a legitimate business gone awry — sought a more lenient term because of his cooperation in the investigation, but U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles refused.
“This defendant was the most culpable in this conspiracy,” the judge said.
Prosecutors said Bosch could still get his sentence reduced through further cooperation, including potential trial testimony.
Gayles said Bosch falsely held himself out as a licensed medical doctor at his Biogenesis of America clinic, where he accepted thousands of dollars a month to provide steroid injections to players such as New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers. Most troubling, Gayles said, was Bosch’s injections of high school players in the Miami area.
“He was the mastermind,” Gayles said. “He was the one who recruited others to assist him.”
Bosch, 51, pleaded guilty in October to conspiracy to distribute testosterone, the sixth person charged in the Biogenesis case to do so. Bosch and Rodriguez are expected to testify if the last two defendants — Rodriguez’s cousin Yuri Sucart and former University of Miami pitching coach Lazaro Collazo — go to trial as scheduled in early April.
MLB imposed a record season-long suspension last year on Rodriguez, one of 14 players penalized in the scandal. The Yankees say Rodriguez, 39, is no longer their third baseman and will have a chance to earn at-bats as a designated hitter.
MLB spokesman Pat Courtney declined to comment.