From Associated Press
GRANTVILLE Pa. – A Pennsylvania horse trainer who for years worked for New Hampshire thoroughbred owner Michael Gill was charged Wednesday with trying to rig races at Penn National Race Course by injecting horses with performance-enhancing drugs.
Pennsylvania State police charged Darryl Delahoussaye, 47, of Harrisburg, with rigging a publicly exhibited contest, administering drugs to race horses, tampering with evidence and theft.
A Dauphin County grand jury investigation concluded that Delahoussaye gave horses banned items - including snake venom and an anti-inflammatory substance - before they raced at the track outside Harrisburg.
He also was charged with reselling three injured horses after promising they would be retired to a petting zoo, but at least one of those horses subsequently raced three times in Massachusetts, according to the grand jury report issued Friday.
Pennsylvania State police said Delahoussaye had two employees remove evidence from a barn at Penn National in an attempt to foil investigators.
Dela houssaye was released on $20,000 bond. A district court official said he did not have a lawyer on file, and a listed phone number for him could not be located.
A horse-owner Delahoussaye had been working for, Michael Gill of Windham, N.H., was barred from Penn National in February after a series of horse breakdowns and a boycott by jockeys fearful for their safety.
Gill, who last year won 370 races and earned $6.7 million, is out of the horse racing business. When contacted Wednesday by the Associated Press, Gill said that if the accusations against Delahoussaye are true, none of it was done at his request. Gill, who has not been charged, said he is not under investigation and has done nothing illegal.
However, Gill is no stranger to controversy.
In 1995 Gill was suspended from racing at Rockingham Park after the drug Clenbuterol was found in a urine sample taken from one of Gill's horses, Sunshine Ivory, and after 'a bottle of the drug was found in his stable area.'At that time, Gill claimed the drug belonged to another trainer with whom he shared a stable.
In 2003 Gill filed several lawsuits against Delaware Race Park for barring him from racing there, he claimed, a conspiracy against him based on his unprecedented success.
In a separate suit Gill filed against the Gulfstream Park Racing Association in Florida at the same time, Gill alleged the management team gave false information about him to Sports Illustrated for an article focusing on Gill's unparalleled success on the track.
That article, “Nagging Questions,” detailed how one of Gill's horses broke a leg in a Gulfstream Park race and was euthanized. Gill's veterinarian removed the horse's leg to examine the injury. The track subsequently had the leg seized and sent it for drug testing. Gill's lawsuit alleged a Gulfstream official knew the test for prohibited drugs was negative but misled the Sports Illustrated writer by not telling him.
In a 2003 interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader, Gill said he was not cheating, and that if any horse of his ever tested positive for a prohibited drug, he would quit racing and sell all his horses.
In 2005, as president of The Mortgage Specialists with several offices in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Gill agreed to pay $425,000 and submit to an independent review, under a settlement announced by state banking regulators after the New Hampshire Banking Department issued a cease-and-desist order in July of 2005 against the mortgage company. The order cited Gill and other key employees for being in violations of state law and regulations, including fraudulent loans and altered documents. Gill told the Union Leader following that action by the state that he accepted responsibility for "screwing up" paperwork but denied any fraud was ever involved in any of the 100,000 loans processed in 18 years of business.
Union Leader Correspondent Carol Robidoux contributed to this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment