So in the last post, I mentioned that CyclingNews.com had run a brief article suggesting that Floyd Landis might be under investigation for fraud related to the creation and fund-raising activities of the Floyd Fairness Fund from way back when.
And for several weeks, it appeared that the story was going exactly nowhere. I searched through Google News from time to time to see if other articles appeared relating to the story, and didn’t find any — until yesterday, that is. Turns out, Mark Zeigler of the San Diego Union-Tribune picked up the story and was able to confirm that the investigation is under way. And then, ESPN’s Bonnie D. Ford managed to get a comment from Landis, himself, confirming that he is, indeed, the target of an investigation of some sort. As Bonnie Ford reports:
“I can’t get into the substance of the investigation, but I am sure you can understand that I would prefer to not be under investigation,” he said in an email. “However, when I was living the lie of denying doping in cycling, it was an ordeal for me as well. Coming clean with the truth has been a stressful process, but I knew that would be the case when I decided to expose the truth about me and cycling.
“I am optimistic that when the prosecutors understand me and the whole situation, they are going to do the right thing.”
Zeigler gives us the low-down on the prosecutor investigating Landis:
Assistant U.S. Attorney Phil Halpern, head of the fraud division in San Diego, is pursuing the case against Landis. Halpern also has a racing license with USA Cycling, the sport’s national governing body. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego would not confirm or deny Landis is the subject of a grand jury investigation.
Ironic, perhaps, that it’s another racing cyclist who is leading the investigation of America’s most notorious cyclist (except for Lance).
Ford reminds us, in her article, that Landis didn’t have the ability to write checks from the money collected, and refers to an October 2010 story where Michael Henson, who administered the fund, said that the money collected went to pay Landis’ legal bills. I’ve got no reason to doubt Michael Henson’s word, so I’ll take it at face value that the money was spent the way they said it would be.
Unfortunately for Landis, he authored a book that said he never doped, and he made similar statements during fund-raising appearances. In light of his statements in 2010, where he admitted to doping during his career (and during his preparation for the 2006 Tour), we now know that his claims of never doping were, quite simply, false.
So, having made at least that false claim while assisting the people raising funds for his defense, did Landis commit fraud? In a word, yes. As one of my long-distance legal eagle pals told me in an email, “[I]it’s a pretty much classic definition of fraud: when someone gains something of value like money via intentional deception.”
Landis knew he had doped during his career — even if, as he claims, he didn’t use testosterone during the 2006 Tour. So to claim he’d never doped was a lie. And if he had told the truth and said, “Yes, I’ve doped in my career, but I didn’t do what they’re accusing me of,” well I doubt he would have been able to collect much money. Except, perhaps, from the wealthy donors who would probably have helped bankroll his defense even without the FFF. (I know I would have cast a jaundiced eye towards donating if I’d been aware that he wasn’t telling the truth on that score.)
So the question becomes, as my legal eagle correspondent said, “does someone accused of wrongdoing have the right to solicit contributions for his own defense? If so, does that right extend only to the innocent?” I think that as this investigation plays out, we will see what the answers to those questions might be.
Not to impugn the reputation of the prosecutor involved, but I find the timing a bit odd. Landis was cooperating with the Novitzky investigation of Armstrong and company, and that investigation was dropped. Now Floyd is under investigation for wire fraud/mail fraud, in relation to his fund-raising efforts. Payback, perhaps? Or perhaps Halpern had to wait his turn, until the whole Novitzky/Armstrong investigation was finished?
Meanwhile, Floyd Landis gets another round in the hot seat. And another chance to become one with the old saw, “O what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” More and more, Pat McQuaid’s advice to Landis back in 2006 (“shut up, take the suspension, and come back in two years”) is looking like sage advice.
Here’s my own bit of free advice to Floyd, for what it’s worth: You can’t change what’s already happened, it’s water under the bridge. That being the case, be ruthlessly honest with those Federal investigators. Even if they can’t get you on fraud charges, they could go after you for lying to investigators. So play it safe and tell the truth, however hard that may be.
This is a deeply disturbing controversy on many levels. As you rightly point out, there are some important policies and politics involved. While I won’t contradict your legal-eagle, a fraud allegation also has an element of reasonableness involved – does a plaintiff have a right to rely on the knowingly false representation that defendant intended the plantiff to rely upon? I have serious doubt this is the case with FFF. I do not beleive it is reasonable for someone to simply take an athlete’s word “I’m clean, and never doped.”
I donated to FFF. I was wrong about Floyd, and at the time did beleive him. However, I don’t believe I was defrauded, because my donation did not rely on his assertion of innocence – it was based on my personal belief that he was entitled to due process to challnge the allegation, even if the allegation was true.
My. $.02 YMMV.
Well put, eightzero. The point about reasonableness resonates with me, as does the point about Floyd defending himself, whether the charges were true or not.
Quick – someone tell Maddoff he doesn’t deserve to be in jail! Certainly it’s “NOT REASONABLE” to give money to a guy & actually EXPECT him to INVEST the money. Just because he SAID he was!
Duly noted, SMTML. Although, I would think it perfectly reasonable to expect an investment advisor to actually invest the money for me. What wasn’t reasonable was to believe that Madoff could generate such incredible returns in any type of market. That would’ve been my clue to either take all my money out, or to not invest with him in the first place.
Landis did use the money as advertised, by all accounts. It was how he got the money that’s questionable. Dubious behavior, potentially fraudulent in the solicitation (I’ll leave it to a lawyer/jury/judge to make that call), but it’s not like he ran off to some tax haven /place with no extradition treaty and lived high off the hog. He bankrupted himself, lost his marriage, and became persona non grata in the big cycling leagues. And he’s got a bunch of people pissed off that he lied to them.
If I were Floyd, I’d be rueing the day I chose to fight the suspension. I guess, from a legal point of view, the question will be: Did his behavior rise to the point where he should be put on trial and/or fined and punished.
Of course, one could argue that the new legal expenses will only make it less likely that his donors will ever be reimbursed. To me, the best outcome would to see the donors reimbursed or, if they don’t want the money back, to have that money go to a worthy charity. Throwing his sorry behind in jail won’t do much to accomplish that outcome, FWIW.
Sheesh….this horse has LONG been dead. It’s nothing but a skeleton w/ some sketchy pieces of hide hanging on the bones. Kicking this particular dead-horse only results in dust. Seems there are more pressing things to be worrying about IMO. I’m SO over it. But that’s just me. Hard to be up in arms over the money I lost to the FFF when I look at what OUR Gov is doing to (with) my money EVERY DAY. Taking it from me and giving it to those who do nothing. Robin Hood lives in Washington DC. And Sacramento. Nothing to do about it but go for a ride. THAT makes everything better.
I think this is a good rule of thumb: if you lie through your teeth to raise money, that’s fraud. Generally speaking, if a person like Landis raises money from thousands by lying to them, it’s not a good defense that those thousands were all gullible. The fact that so many people were defrauded is proof enough that the fault lies with the fraud and not the defrauded. Rant, the “too good to be true” defense didn’t work for Madoff, and it won’t work for Landis either.
There’s no doubt here that Landis lied. This is not a close case, lying-wise. Landis said he did not dope. He was lying, and he knew he was lying. He lied intentionally to separate people from their money, to get them to buy books and write checks. So we’re not talking about mere “puffing”, or exaggeration, or stretching the truth, or “little white lies”. These were large, intentional lies going to the very heart of Landis’ fund-raising effort. He said he was innocent, and he asked for our money so that he could prove his innocence.
Rant, you’re right that Landis used the money he raised for his defense. But he did not use his money as he said he would, to prove his innocence. It was never Landis’ intent to prove his innocence, as Landis knew he wasn’t innocent. It was Landis’ intent to spend all the money he could raise in an effort to … how can I say it? To pull the wool over the eyes of the arbitrators? To confuse the issues? To buy himself a positive verdict? Ergo he did not spend his money the way he said he would.
The best argument I can imagine for Landis stems from his right to plead his innocence and deny his guilt, even though he was guilty. More than this, every person has the right to a good legal defense, even if the person is guilty as sin. A good legal defense requires money, so arguably every person (even guilty persons) has a right to raise funds for a legal defense. The question then becomes, does a person have a right to raise funds for a legal defense by professing their innocence, even if the person is guilty?
This argument might be interesting when the accused is facing criminal charges. There IS no legal right to competent defense in a civil case, let alone a private arbitration case. Moreover, if the law concludes that Landis had a right to lie to raise funds to pay his lawyers, this would throw cold water on subsequent efforts to organize legal defense funds. I mean, how much money would Landis have raised if he told his supporters that he might be lying and that the law could not touch him if he was lying?
Larry,
Regarding Landis’ stated aim in raising the money to prove his innocence. There’s two aspects we need to think about here. One is whether he used testosterone during the 2006 Tour. That is, is he innocent of that particular charge. The other is whether he doped during 2006, including during the Tour.
Landis has admitted that he doped during 2006, including during the Tour. But he still maintains that he didn’t use testosterone during the Tour. You can choose to believe him or not. Given that he didn’t tell the truth previously, I couldn’t fault people for doubting his continued claim that he didn’t use testosterone during the Tour. And of the possibilities offered by those who believed Landis was guilty from the outset, one was that he used a blood bag that contained blood drawn when he had been using testosterone.
Of course, for that to have skewed the T/E ratio, he would have had to have had a serious amount of synthetic T in that bag. Another possibility was that he left a testosterone patch on for too long, and that explained the T/E ratio which triggered the more sophisticated tests. And a third possibility is that his bender the night before contributed to the T/E ratio, and either that or a contaminated blood bag led to the CIR test results.
So, one question is, “Did Landis knowingly use testosterone during the Tour?” If he did, then he’s still lying. If he didn’t, then he fucked up (pardon my French), plain and simple. But he wouldn’t exactly be lying to say he didn’t use testosterone during the Tour. In the latter case, he didn’t know that the blood bag was contaminated, and thus didn’t know he would test positive.
For the sake of argument, though, let’s take him at his word and suppose that he didn’t use testosterone during the Tour. In other words, they busted him and he’d been doping, but they got him for the wrong thing. Given the nature of the WADA-constructed code and the arbitration system, trying to prove his innocence on the charge was a fool’s errand. That much is pretty obvious now, and for many who doubted him at the time, obvious then, too.
Failure in his appeals seems to me preordained, even if he was truly innocent of the charge. It was a poor choice to claim total innocence, that is, to claim (following the Lance Armstrong playbook) that he’d never doped in his career. But if on this occasion on this charge he actually hadn’t done what he was accused of, and he succeeded in his appeals, he would have “proved his innocence” (but on only that specific charge).
It might be splitting hairs a bit, but it seems to me that in order to raise money for his defense, he had to make some statement about his innocence. We can infer from the result that because he failed, he must have been guilty. And from that, we can conclude that he lied. Or we can look at the appeals results and say that he failed to overcome a system rigged so that the athlete loses in all but the most egregious of violations of testing procedure or protocol (and now, even that avenue is effectively blocked, since athletes now have to prove that the procedural violation led to the positive test result).
At this point, I can’t really be sure that Landis was telling the truth about not using testosterone during the Tour. On the surface, it appears he was guilty. But given the quality of the lab work at LNDD, I can’t be confident in their results, either.
So here’s my question back to you (or any other lawyer reading this). In order to make a fraud charge stick against Landis, would the Feds have to prove that his statement that he had never doped was a lie, or would they have to prove he doped using testosterone during the 2006 Tour? The fund was set up for him to contest the specific allegation, not to prove his total and complete innocence on any charge that he’d doped at any other point in his career. At least, that’s how it seems to me.
One could argue that because he lost, he must therefore have been lying about his innocence on the doping charge. But despite their best efforts, sometimes innocent people land in jail, too. They’re still punished for whatever crime they were accused of, despite being innocent.
If the Feds have to prove that he was lying about the specific anti-doping charge, Landis might at least get his day in court to contest the scientific validity of the results. I don’t think this would go well for him, as his own credibility would be suspect (to say the least), but there’s certainly a (admittedly very slim) chance he could prevail. Fighting such a case would be expensive, and I doubt he could find the resources to do so. And honestly, I have no idea how he’s paying for legal representation now, given that he’s currently unemployed.
If the test of whether raising funds for a defense is whether the person prevails or not, and if not he/she could be charged with fraud, that would certainly put a damper on people trying the fund-raising approach to paying their legal bills. I don’t know if that would be a good thing in the long run, though.
In Landis’ specific case, I think he would have been better served to take the suspension and come back later. He would have been less of a pariah in the sport (and if he’d done the full David Millar, he might even have come back on a UCI ProTour team), and he certainly wouldn’t be the target of a grand jury investigation right now. 20/20 hindsight and all…
Rant, I think you have hit the nail on the head. Taking away all the emotions and such both before and after the ‘confession’, many of us followed his tribunal at Pepperdine very closely. I have to say that I was convinced by the arguments made that he was indeed innocent of THAT one particular charge (using Testosterone during the Tour, stage 16 I think it was?).
Not to rehash all that, but just too much came out showing what a sham WADA and it’s entire anti-doping system is. The testimony on the WADA techs and the analyzer, HOW they did the multiple runs (and darn it, only saving the VERY LAST run showing the results they wanted)….So….DID he commit fraud by taking our money for his defense if he indeed did NOT do that particular deed which he was accused of?
I always believed that if his case had been heard in a court of law instead of the rigged arbitration panel system it would have been thrown out on many levels. IF he is now truly being taken to court for fraud, I think it will be very dicey for the prosecution…tho of course, our legal system isn’t exactly set up to find the TRUTH. The fact that he has since admitted doping during his career is apples and oranges (IMO) as to whether he did what he was accused of at THAT particular moment in time. If I were to murder someone and then be accused of murdering someone else, I could say with total confidence that I am innocent of that charge. Would that make my defense on that particular charge a sham?
All food for thought. Isn’t our legal system something? Splitting hairs for sure. But that’s what’s so great about your site…a whole bunch of smart people (not including me) discuss all sides of these issues.
OK…off on work-travel again. No rest for the weary.
Can I give you the bottom line? Landis intentionally lied in order to manipulate people to give him money. He did so repeatedly and systematically, over a period of months, and raised a lot of money as a result. If it matters, he used this money for his personal benefit. This is criminal fraud, pure and simple, and I don’t see any defense to it.
Landis didn’t merely say that he was innocent of the charges against him. Landis claimed that he never doped in any way, shape or form, not during the 2006 Tour, not before that time, and not afterwards. This is what Landis told the contributors to his “fairness fund”, and it’s also what he told the arbitrators in Malibu, under oath (meaning that he’s guilty of perjury as well as fraud).
I understand the arguments you guys are making about the ADA system and the arbitration process. Back in the day, I made many of these same arguments, and I continue to make many of these same arguments in my work as a baseball blogger. But these arguments don’t work as an excuse for criminal fraud. Even if we were to regard the anti-doping system as evil and corrupt (which I do not), the law does not permit the use of fraud to fight an evil and corrupt system. The ends do not justify the means.
The same argument applies to your argument, Rant, that the “fairness fund” was organized for a legitimate purpose, and that the funds raised by Landis were used for that purpose. It is not a defense to fraud that the fraud was used to raise money for a good cause. Even charities are expected to tell the truth. Moreover, Landis lied about the “goodness” of his cause. Granted, the government does not normally go after a legitimate charity simply because the charity misstates the extent of the need the charity is addressing. But in this case, Landis was raising funds to benefit Landis, not a home for widows and orphans.
Here’s the relevant Q&A from the Kimmage interview. Please look at what Landis said and try to explain how this isn’t fraud:
Q: “Tell me about the Floyd Fairness Fund. You had some big donors and some small donors and the photograph I am going to show to you now is a smaller donor waving a placard that says ‘Floyd is innocent.’ (I show him the photograph.) What’s going through your head at that moment?”
A: “It’s okay with me because I know that if I was given ten hours to sit down and talk to him, and tell him what happened, he would understand…well, he might not understand but at least he would have a better understanding of how I came to make the decisions. He might not agree but at least he would have a better perspective. But I can’t tell him. I can’t tell the truth because if I tell the facts to the press it’s not going to come out right. And I’m going to get ripped apart by other people and I can’t explain to him why I did what I did because I just don’t have the time. I would love to; I wish I could sit down with every person and just explain to them but where do you even start? Where do I go back to the beginning? I mean, that’s the problem I have with Jonathan’s statement that I should just tell what I know about me. That’s not the story at all. That’s not the truth. There is more to it than just the doping. And if you don’t see the whole picture you don’t know anything. You might as well not know.”
If Landis raised money with the attitude that he didn’t have the time to tell the truth, and that the people writing him checks “don’t know anything” and “might as well not know” the truth, he deserves what’s coming to him.
Larry,
I see your point. That last quote pretty much says it all.
For those who are checking the comments, I just ran across an article called The Psychology of Fraud on the NPR web site. Haven’t read the full thing, yet, but it looks interesting.
I don’t remember in which interview Floyd said this, but after he admitted he’d doped, he was talking about the FFF, and said that he would tell large potential money donors the truth–that he had doped- but that they still donated, (or that some of them still donated).
Barbara, he said something to that effect in the Kimmage interview.
“Q: What about the bigger donors? You did tell some of those [that you doped]?
Landis: The majority of them, yeah, because a lot of them had a financial interest either in Tailwind Sports or with USA Cycling and I figured I’d tell them the facts and if they helped then…I mean I was advised both by Jim Ochowicz and Steve Johnson – the president and CEO of USA Cycling. I talked to them openly about it and their advice was ‘Get through it and you’ll get back in cycling and we’re sorry but we can’t help you.’ And again, that’s not to pawn it off on them, I could have told the truth, that’s not blaming anyone but all the indications were that the wise thing to do, the prudent thing to do, was to shut up and go home. But I can’t do that – maybe it’s a personality fault – but I can’t just take it and go home. In the big picture I was wrong but I focused on the part that I was right about and justified it in my head.”
Whether you believe Landis on this point is up to you. I personally do not believe him. It’s odd that he’d refer to people with financial interests in Tailwind Sports or USA Cycling, as if he owed some kind of duty to those people that he did not owe the rest of us. Tailwind is the company that ran the U.S. Postal team — Landis might have approached investors in Tailwind seeking funds, but it’s not as if Landis’ guilt or innocence would have affected the financial standing of Tailwind (that is, any more than it would have affected anyone with a financial stake in cycling). The reference to USA Cycling is even stranger, as this company is a not-for-profit.
I think it’s bizarre that he’d respond to a question about “big donors” by dragging in the names of Jim Ochowicz (past president, USA Cycling) and Steve Johnson (current president). These guys were not “big donors”. Ochowicz has said that Landis asked USA Cycling to help him defend his doping case, but Ochowicz denies that Landis confessed back then to having doped.
I don’t know. Maybe it all makes sense to Landis somehow.
Larry,
My reading of the reference to Och and Steve Johnson is that Landis asked them for advice in the early days of the scandal. That would make a certain amount of sense, given that he might want to figure out whether the federation can offer him any assistance (short answer, “No!”). Why or whether he spoke to them about his doping, I have no clue. It wouldn’t surprise me too much if he did, and it wouldn’t surprise me too much if he didn’t. Both men surely know what goes on in the world of pro racing, though. If not, they would be almost willfully blind to the history of doping within the world of pro and amateur cycling (which is not to excuse the fact that it’s gone on).
Why Floyd thought that he owed more honesty to the big donors is beyond me, but they did pay for the bulk of his defense according to a couple of my sources. The owners of Tailwind Sports would have a stake in helping Floyd out, if only to keep certain information from coming out in the press and driving away their sponsors. It’s never been clear to me whether those folks offered Floyd some financial support first, or whether he solicited the support. His answer to the question seems to indicate the latter, though.
I get the impression that his answers to Kimmage’s questions kind of rambled on and off the current subject, especially in the unedited transcripts. Sometimes a bit of editing can go a long way towards telling the story with clarity.
Let me be the first to say it:
SHOW ME THE MONEY, LANCE!
I wasn’t defrauded by FFF. I was by LiveStrong. When am I gonna get that money back, hum?
Maybe someday, EightZero, maybe someday:
Source says Bruyneel was served with subpoena by federal investigators
http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/11852/Source-says-Bruyneel-was-served-with-subpoena-by-federal-investigators.aspx
How exactly were you “DEFRAUDED” by Livestrong? Nah, nevermind, I don’t want to hear it.
I do want to thank Larry for once again so eloquently explaining what I think but no longer have the patience to try to write myself.
One of the biggest JOKES of all is when Landis said he didn’t “care” about Lance & was DONE TALKING. Hah, there he was again last Friday. Of course, since he apparently has not had a job in THREE YEARS, I guess he’s got time on his hands.
Eightzero,
Patience, grasshopper. 🙂
Mike,
Thanks for the link. I’d really like to be a fly on the wall when they question Johan. Can’t imagine that the subpoena has to do with a case that’s already been closed. I wonder what they want to talk to him about? Selling bikes that were meant for the riders, perhaps? What the money was used for? Hmm. Enquiring minds want to know.
SMTML,
I know from experience that it stinks to be unemployed for so long. That said, I wonder how Landis manages to put a roof over his head, pay for food, and all.
The Lance Armstrong story, in a nutshell, is “I was a pro cyclist, got cancer and almost died but managed to survive and come back as a pro cyclist and win the TdF a record number of times. I deny taking PEDs.” I myself am not sure if he ever made his “cleanness” a part of the pitch for Livestrong, but certainly he would be in a whole lot different position if it were to be shown that he doped. Whether or not there might be a case for fraud, if it is shown that he doped, I’ll leave to the legal experts.
On the other hand, there has been quite a cottage industry that he doped, and there’s quite a number of people who think so. What effect this has on potential donors, I don’t know.
Not having donated to either FFF or LA, it’s all basically academic to me.
You’re a wise man, William, on both counts. I donated to the FFF, and I’ve bought yellow wristbands from the LAF/LiveStrong. You know what the say about a fool and his money… 😉
SMTML, like you, I decided not to take 8-0’s bait regarding LiveStrong. I can’t make sense of his comment without putting words in his mouth, and I get in trouble when I try to do that.
8-0 says that he believes he was not defrauded, because even though he believed Landis when Landis said he never doped, he gave to Landis to promote due process. That’s fine. It’s obvious that many people on this site feel something like what 8-0 feels. That’s OK. The fact that you and I (mostly you) have faced criticism here because we feel differently … well, that’s OK too. Life might be dull if everyone agreed with us all the time.
I never gave money to FFF, but I spent countless hours defending Landis’ innocence (or more accurately, that there was no good proof of his guilt). My time is valuable to me. Did I believe Landis? Not exactly, but I was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Would I have devoted so much time to his cause if he’d spoken the truth? No way.
What would have happened if Landis had told the truth when he raised money for the FFF? Perhaps 8-0 would have given Landis money anyway, but I think he would have been one of the few. Even if Landis had skirted the issue, and told us that on the advice of his lawyers he could not address whether he’d doped in advance of the arbitration … I doubt he would have raised much money. Landis lied because, by his own admission, he knew that the lie was necessary to raise the money he wanted to raise.
That’s what fraud is. It turns on the facts, and not on how those defrauded feel about the fraud after it has been revealed to them.
Oh, and yw. And right back at you. I love your comments!
Larry:
I have searched the posts above and can find no one who could be a match for “yw”. Or is this some arcane internet code?
William,
According to the Txtpedia app, YW: You’re Welcome. Had me scratching my head for a moment, too. 🙂
WS, AFAIK SMTML <3 acronyms. Oddly, there does not seem to be an acronym for "acronym".
Well, you learn something everyday.
There is the initialism TLA, which can stand either for three letter acronym or three letter abbreviation, what the case is. And if you use it for three letter abbreviation, it becomes its own TLA!
BTW, an acronym is technically only correct where it is pronounced as a word, otherwise it is an abbreviation. NASA is an acronym, IBM is an abbreviation.
I wouldn’t mind having my $75 back.
Hugh,
I hope that Floyd is able to make good on his intention to pay people back. And if he does, I hope you’re one of the first.
Landis may have the best of intentions in regard to paying back donors; but I sure wouldn’t hold my breath. He is a man with only a high school education and no marketable skills. Any chance for some sort of post-racing career in cycling is shot. He has become such a reviled figure in cycling that I doubt even the local bike shop would hire him as a clerk: too many people would refuse to patronize such a store. I’m not sure what he has been doing the last few years as far as working and/or making money, but my impression is that it has been little if anything. I suppose he could write a sequel to his book, putting forth the putatively now correct version of things, but I doubt such a work would sell. Basically, about all he can hope for is some minimum wage job, perhaps with the chance to work his way up, through the ranks so to speak.
In some ways I think he best option would be to return to the family farm and take up there. I’m sure his folks would welcome him back, however I’m also sure there is a big dose of how are you going to keep him down on the farm after he’s seen Paris working here too, so perhaps that’s out too.
I kind of feel sorry for him: it’s a sort of Faustian tragedy. He made a pact with the Devil drugs, and the devil came back to claim his soul. Regardless of whether or not he will face any further prosecution, his life has been destroyed. Perhaps deservedly so, and perhaps not. YMMV.
I just know that this time, we’re REALLY going to get to the bottom of this Lance Armstrong thing! Because we’ve put our best man on the case.
http://es.pn/KGdciH