Federal agents quietly arrested three Florida men on the periphery of the Biogenesis doping scandal, hitting Gary Lee Jones, Frank Fiore and Anthony Carbone with an assortment of felony charges, according to court documents filed in the Southern District of Florida two weeks ago.
In contrast to last week’s splashy arrests of Biogenesis founder Tony Bosch and six of his associates, including Alex Rodriguez’s cousin and former drug supplier, no news conferences accompanied the arrests of Jones, Fiore and Carbone.
Jones, who sold Biogenesis documents to MLB investigators last year, is accused of trying to sell an AK-47 machine gun to an undercover agent from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office in February, according to a criminal complaint filed July 28. The same document, now unsealed, accuses Fiore and Carbone of conspiring to distribute a panoply of illegal drugs, including the hardcore steroids testosterone ethanate, testosterone propionate, and Deca Durabolin, along with cocaine, Xanax, and thousands of Viagra and Cialis pills.
The complaint also describes the men of scheming to distribute counterfeit drugs and currency. Fiore is alleged to have asked an undercover officer to break his brother-in-law’s leg and steal his money and jewelry.
A prosecution notice filed Monday states Fiore shares two corporate bank accounts with Joseph Gagliano, the name of a New Orleans man with reported ties to organized crime.
Fiore’s attorney, Russell Williams, said Fiore once had a legitimate business relationship with Gagliano but that the accounts they co-signed were inactive. (An attorney for Gagliano, who was recently jailed on weapons charges, did not respond to requests for comment.)
Jones became a figure in baseball's latest steroid scandal in April, when investigators from Major League Baseball paid him $125,000 for documents that allegedly linked Rodriguez, Ryan Braun and other MLB players to Biogenesis, the now-defunct anti-aging clinic near Miami. Major League Baseball suspended 14 professional baseball players, including Rodriguez for an entire season, following a lengthy investigation.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami hauled in the seven Biogenesis figures on conspiracy charges last week and is expected to name additional defendants in the near future.
Carbone, who owns a tanning salon in the Miami area, also figured in the Biogenesis case. The salon employed Porter Fischer, the man who removed several boxes of medical records from Bosch’s clinic that would become key to the Biogenesis investigations. The documents then disappeared from Fisher's vehicle on March 24, 2013, during an alleged break-in that occurred while he was parked outside of Carbone’s tanning salon in Boca Raton.
While Reginald St. Fleur was charged with the break-in, St. Fleur's lawyer told the Daily News last December that his client was not guilty, and suggested that Fisher might have staged the break-in after negotiations with MLB officials to sell the documents for $125,000 had broken down several days before.
Fischer denied having helped orchestrate the break-in and claimed it was his intent to deliver the Biogenesis records to a Florida Department of Health official when he stopped by Boca Tanning to try out a new spray-on product.
As the Daily News previously reported, the clinic records had become worthless to Fischer by March 21, 2013, when he received a letter from baseball's lawyers forbidding him from transmitting or destroying the papers because they would be used as evidence in the lawsuit MLB filed against Bosch and several associates the following day in Florida state court.
The News reported last April that the Anthony Carbone and his brother, Peter, contacted MLB officials and players to see if they would be interested in bidding on Biogenesis documents. ESPN reported last year that Peter Carbone had sold Biogenesis documents to Rodriguez's representatives earlier in the year.
The new criminal complaint describes how a cooperating subject helped two criminal investigators from the Food and Drug Administration and narcotics agents from Palm Beach to penetrate a hub of drug dealing and other shady business surrounding Havana Nights Cigar Bar and Lounge in Boca Raton, Florida, a business led by Fiore and Carbone.
The cooperating subject — who faces tax fraud charges in Virginia — met with Fiore to discuss distributing counterfeit pharmaceuticals, Fiore allegedly introduced the cooperating subject to Jones, who soon produced a sample of 20 tablets of what "appeared to be counterfeit Xanax."
All three men are in custody in Florida. Attorneys for Jones and Carbone did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.
