Lance Armstrong Investigation: Expert Says No Doubt He Took EPO

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If Jeffrey Novitzky and his legal team are looking for an expert witness to appear before the Grand Jury and give his opinion on whether Lance Armstrong took EPO while riding for U.S. Postal, he may want to consider Dr. Michael Ashenden. Ashenden is one of the scientists who designed the tests used to detect EPO and has gone on record as saying:

U.S. Justice Department May Join The Fun in the Lance Armstrong Investigation

The WSJ reported today that Floyd Landis filed a whistleblower lawsuit under the Federal False Claims Act. This act encourages whistleblowers to report when the government has been defrauded. Similarly, I blogged before that the recently passed Dodd-Frank bill also encourages whistleblowers for cases subject to litigation by the SEC. As it turns out, whistleblowers are the number one way that fraud is detected and the government has decided to reward whistleblowers for coming forward. In this case, if the government sues Lance or the former U.S. Postal Team for fraud and is able to collect then Floyd will get 30% of the money. Of course, Landis will have to hire a legal team to make his case so government incentive is justified in my view.

Predictably, the reaction from the Armstrong PR campaign was twofold: First, why is the U.S. government spending money investigating a philanthropist athlete who races his bike on foreign soil. Second, this shows that Floyd Landis is a money grubbing liar like we've been saying all along. However, the Justice Department may not be listening. Here is why.

More on Lance Armstrong's Podium Finishers

This post is a follow up to a post from August 9th, 2010, where I discussed the eight podium finishers who joined Lance Armstrong in 2nd and 3rd place in the Tour de France during Lance's glory years of 1999-2005 (see this link). A reader commented about a similar analysis by Bicycling Magazine's Bill Strickland and found on the NBC Sports' website and I wanted to make you aware of Strickland's analysis.

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Disputed Admission of PED Use by Lance Armstrong May be Reevaluated in Light of New Evidence

VeloNation reports that a disputed admission of PED use by Lance Armstrong may need be reconsidered in light of new evidence submitted by former teammate Frankie Andreu and Andreu's wife Betsy.  First, the disputed admission:

Lance Armstrong Investigation: Following the Money Trail

Read VeloNation's interview of Mark about the evidence Jeffrey Novitsky is most likely seeking in the Lance Armstrong Investigation.

Lance Armstrong Holds Press Conference to Discuss Investigation

This one is hot off the press on the Lance Armstrong investigation. The ONN is reporting that Lance held a press conference today and said: "that it would probably be best if everyone sat down for this."  According to ONN, Armstrong began the press conference by saying:

"Look, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. It's bad," Armstrong said during the nationally televised press conference. "But you have to swear to God that you won't get mad when I tell you, because if you get upset and yell about how you're really disappointed I'm just going to walk out of here."

Since the article is fairly short and hard to summarize, I am including the remainder verbatim from OSN:

My experience with Asea

After my first post on Asea (see this link), my friend asked me to try four bottles with a money-back guarantee if I didn't see significant gains in my cycling performance. She asked me to try all four bottles and keep track of my wattage and performance to see if it made any difference. I could then decide if I saw any improvement and pay her cost of $30 per bottle if I did.

Lance Armstrong Investigation Update

The news on the Lance Armstrong fraud investigation has been non-existent lately. However, some news came out today that Lance has hired a big gun to help him with public relations and legal defense. His new special counsel and media expert is Mark Fabiani. Apparently, Fabiani worked for Bill Clinton during the Whitewater investigation and more recently helped Goldman Sachs keep their image intact while they were being investigated for fraud by the SEC. This guy must be pricey! I take it Lance is nervous about this investigation.

Also, the same article said that George Hincapie also hired a big NY law firm. This news broke about the same time that George crashed out of the Tour of Utah and needed 18 stitches. It seems to me that Lance and George have had more accidents since Floyd Landis alleged they cheated for years. Sorry to hear about it George.

As for improving Lance's image, Fabiani got right to work and continued the same old story: Floyd has no credibility (see this link for more on that) and investigating athletes for doping is a waste of taxpayer money. Nothing new here. I hope Lance gets his money's worth from this guy.

As for a waste of money, I personally think paying a media expert to make you look better is money that could have been better used. Image is everything to fraudsters. Con men build confidence in themselves. Smooth talkers with little or no character...

In the end, I doubt the government will get a verdict against Lance and I doubt Fabiani will keep the majority of the public from believing Lance is a fraud. It reminds me of the OJ Simpson case. He was never convicted criminally for murder but if you think he's innocent then I'm sure there is a nice Ponzi scheme waiting to get your money.

Madoff Net Winners Want More from Net Losers

Today's WSJ is reporting that the 'net winners' in the Madoff scam (i.e. those who withdrew more than they invested) are suing in an effort to collect more money. I find this amazing. First, these people got assets from the net losers already and now they want more. To get more, they will need to take it from someone else: either more from the net losers or from taxpayers. I personally hope they are required to give back through clawbacks any excess that they got above their investment so the losers have more to make them whole. If so, this group would break even which is better than all the others who are net losers. Maybe everyone should end up getting an equal percentage so everyone is an equal net loser. Then, in addition they could recover up to $500k from the government. That sounds fair to me...

In any case, the real losers are taxpayers. They didn't put in anything and have to give up some of their money.

Lance Armstrong's 8 Podium Finishers Includes 7 Dopers

(Thanks to Reed Dempsey for emailing me the figure above. Reed saw a link to Fraudbytes on Greg LeMond's facebook page where Greg said: "Very interesting blog." We are honored to have Greg as a fan of our Fraudbytes' Facebook page.)

This analysis shows the eight riders who finished on the podium next to Lance during Armstrong's seven yellow jersey years. These eight riders include three very gifted riders who finished more than once next to Lance including Jan Ullrich (on the podium four times), Joseba Beloki (on the podium three times), and Ivan Basso (on the podium twice) along with five other riders who finished one time on the podium including Zulle and Escartin (1999), Rumsas (2002),  Vinokourov (2003), and Kloden (2004).

Interestingly, seven of these eight individuals have been shown to have doped and five served suspensions. The only one who was never associated with doping was Escartin. Reed also mentioned in his email that the power data over the past 25 years shows a "bubble" over the last 15 years as:

More on Levi Leipheimer's doping allegations

Yesterdays news revealed that Levi Leipheimer's former team manager said that Levi was almost pulled from the Tour de France because his blood off-score coefficient was 132.8 and at 133 you are considered doping. Since I wasn't familiar with this "blood off-score coefficient" I looked in Wikipedia under "Blood Doping" and found the following:

Levi Leipheimer accused of doping

When Floyd Landis accused Lance Armstrong and his US Postal team of widespread doping, he also named other Americans as cheaters including Levi Leipheimer. Apparently, Floyd Landis isn't the only one claiming that Levi Leipheimer also doped. Now Leipheimer's former team manager is saying that Leipheimer was doping after he was on the US Postal team with Lance Armstrong. Here are some key quotes from an article on CyclingNews:

More Smoke from the Lance Armstrong Investigation: Fire or Conspiracy?

The NY Times is reporting that they interviewed one of Lance Armstrong's former teammates who corroborated the story that Floyd Landis is telling about rampant doping on the U.S. Postal team under Lance's encouragement. Here is the key quote from the article: