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Victor Conte Jr. (July 10, 1950 – November 3, 2025) was an American musician and businessman who was the founder and president of Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), which is now defunct. BALCO was a sports nutrition center in California. In the late 1970s, Conte played bass with funk and R&B group Tower of Power, appearing on the band's 1978 release We Came to Play!.
Conte served time in prison in 2005 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute and to money laundering. He later operated Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning (SNAC Nutrition).
At the time, Conte's nickname was "walking fish", due to his unusual way of moving across the stage when he was performing. He left Pure Food and Drug Act some time prior to 1977. He was a member of Tower of Power from 1977 until 1979 playing bass guitar. He also collaborated during that period with pianist Herbie Hancock and violinist Sugarcane Harris.
In a December 2004 interview with Martin Bashir on ABC's 20/20 program, he admitted to running doping programs which have broken Olympic records. He said, "The whole history of the games is just full of corruption, cover-up, performance-enhancing drug use." In the interview he implicated five-time Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones and her partner Tim Montgomery, Kelli White (who later admitted using performance-enhancing drugs), sprinter Dwain Chambers, NFL linebacker Bill Romanowski, and others.
On December 21, 2006, Yahoo Sports reported that one of Conte's initial defense lawyers, Troy Ellerman, had been targeted by the FBI as a possible source of leaks to the media during the Barry Bonds probe. On February 14, 2007, Ellerman pleaded guilty to leaking grand jury testimony. It was also reported that FBI agents were an additional source of leaks. In May 2007, Conte claimed to be again providing supplements for Dwain Chambers, who left track and field to play in the NFL Europa league for the Hamburg Sea Devils before returning to athletics in 2008. According to Conte, the nutritional supplements provided via his company Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning, are perfectly legal.
On December 13, 2007, Conte appeared on CNN before Mitchell Report was officially released.
In 2008, in the aftermath of the investigation, Conte wrote a book BALCO: The Straight Dope on Barry Bonds, Marion and What We Can Do to Save Sports which was co-written with author Nathan Jendrick. There was defamation litigation about the book's publication by boxer Shane Mosley which delayed the publication date. Mosley dropped the lawsuit, but not before Skyhorse Publishing had been scared away from publishing it. The book is officially unpublished as of 2017, but the unpublished manuscript has been made available.
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