Jorge Navarro, one of two high-profile trainers indicted last year on charges related to the administration of illegal substances to race horses, on Wednesday entered a plea of guilty to the felony offense of conspiracy to commit drug adulteration and misbranding with the intent to defraud and mislead. The plea could mean as many as five years in prison and subsequent supervised release of as many as three years. Navarro, who entered the plea during a 90-minute video-conferenced hearing before Judge Mary Kay Vsykocil of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, will be formally sentenced Dec. 17. A second felony count on which Navarro was previously indicted, conspiracy to defraud the United States, will be dismissed at the time of sentencing. Navarro previously had pleaded not guilty to both counts. As part of the plea, Navarro has agreed to forfeit as much as $250,000 in criminal proceeds and pay at least $70,000 in penalties, although Vsykocil said higher amounts are within legal boundaries. Those exact amounts will be announced at sentencing. :: Bet the races with confidence on DRF Bets. You're one click away from the only top-rated betting platform fully integrated with exclusive data, analysis, and expert picks. The guilty plea by Navarro, a 46-year-old Panama native who is not a U.S. citizen, comes after a handful of manufacturers and distributors who were indicted in the wide-ranging case also entered guilty pleas. Last week, Khristian Rhein, a veterinarian who admitted to selling illegal substances to the indicted trainer Jason Servis, entered a guilty plea to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding and is facing a maximum prison sentence of three years. During the Wednesday hearing, Vsykocil spent considerable time reading sections of a previously agreed-upon seven-page plea agreement signed July 29 by Navarro and all involved parties, including his legal defense and federal prosecutors. Among the specific admissions by Navarro were that illegal drugs were administered to stakes horses Shancelot, X Y Jet, War Story, and others ahead of the Breeders’ Cup, Dubai Golden Shaheen, and other high-profile events. In entering the plea, Navarro, a high-percentage trainer who had been dogged by accusations of doping throughout the past decade due to numerous violations of racing regulations and his ability to rapidly improve the performance of his horses, affirmed actions that included “orchestrating a widespread scheme that involved performance-enhancing drugs . . . designed to evade the detection” of racing authorities. Those drugs included those for which “no lawful prescription existed.” Also during the hearing, Navarro was compelled by Vsykocil to spell out, in his own words, his crimes committed from 2016 through early 2020. Among numerous offenses, Navarro iterated that he was the “organizer of a criminal activity that involved multiple different people” and that Servis was one of those. Servis has entered a not guilty plea, and last week, attorneys for the trainer submitted a motion to throw out evidence collected during wiretaps of his phone. The attorneys contended that authorization for the wiretaps were based on “deliberately or recklessly false information” submitted to the courts by an FBI agent. Both Navarro and Servis were banned from racing following the indictments, which were released March 9, 2020, on the same day that all of the individuals in the indictments were arrested. During the arrests, investigators and law-enforcement officials seized the cell phones and computers of the indicted individuals. In the indictment, Navarro was specifically alleged to have administered illegal substances marketed as pain blockers to the horse X Y Jet in 2019, including prior to two wins. X Y Jet died in early 2020, and his connections said that the cause of death was a heart attack. In wiretapped conversations, Navarro discussed the procurement and administration of a substance called SGF-1000 with Servis from a Kentucky distributor known as MediVet, according to the indictment. A contracted sales director for MediVet, Michael Kegley, has entered a guilty plea. SGF-1000, an injectable, was marketed as a growth stimulant that also could help repair damaged tissue and act as a vasodilator. Racing officials and attorneys for Servis have cast doubt on the efficacy of the substance, citing tests showing that it contained “mostly” sheep collagen. Attorneys for the government have said that they intend to treat any substance “thought to be performance-enhancing” as a performance-enhancing substance even if it was a “dud.” The government also has claimed that Navarro illegally administered clenbuterol, a regulated bronchial dilator that can have steroid-like effects on horses, and that he hid administrations of both clenbuterol and SGF-1000 from owners of horses by altering or conspiring to alter vet bills. Following the release of the indictments, New York regulators pulled samples from horses trained by Servis and Navarro and discovered that the vast majority had traces of clenbuterol in their systems. Some racing regulators have contended privately that they believe trainers are using micro-doses of clenbuterol to evade detection and achieve the anabolic effect of the drug to improve performance. Those fears have led racing states across the United States to tighten regulation of the drug over the past two years, and many racing states now require treatments with clenbuterol to be filed with state regulators and for horses to test free and clear of the medication before they are allowed to race. In 2017, Navarro was fined $10,000 and put on probation for one year by the New Jersey Racing Commission for “conduct extremely detrimental to racing” after video was posted on social media showing Navarro and owner Randal Gindi rooting on a horse in which they used terms suggesting that the horse had been administered performance-enhancing substances. Several tracks banned Navarro after the video surfaced. Given the guilty plea, it is highly unlikely Navarro will be licensed by a racing jurisdiction anytime in the near future, if ever. During his 12-year career as a licensed trainer, Navarro won 1,224 races from 4,344 starts (28.1 percent) while earning $34.9 million in purses. A total of nine horses he trained over that time won one or more graded stakes races, led by X Y Jet, who won six graded stakes, including the Grade 1 Dubai Golden Shaheen in March 2019, and amassed $3.1 million in purse earnings before collapsing and dying on the morning of Jan. 8, 2020, three months before Navarro was indicted. – additional reporting by Marty McGee