HISA calls out Kentucky lab for fake results on 91 drug tests

A University of Kentucky laboratory that got the boot from federal horse-racing authorities is on the hook for more than $1 million in repayments for 91 rigged drug tests. It also could be on the business end of a criminal investigation after its former director Dr. Scott Stanley was accused of sending out false test results, including two that impugned the reputations of a pair of unnamed horsemen.

That was the upshot Tuesday of a nine-page report and a 31-minute news conference put together by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority and its drug enforcer, the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit. They accused the lab of “persistent delays in reporting results, unprofessional staff behavior and unresponsiveness to HIWU communications.”

Most of the federal criticism fell Tuesday on Stanley.

“This was the case ... of a lab director who substituted his own judgment for the standards, rules, protocols and guidelines that had been established and agreed (upon),” HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus said on a Zoom call with about 30 media members. She went on to say, “At the end of the day, it’s critically important that horsemen are treated fairly. That is honestly what this is all about.”

The University of Kentucky’s equine analytical-chemistry laboratory was one of the five testing facilities HIWU paid to grade test samples from racehorses. On Feb. 12, HIWU cut off that lab from its regular role of checking what was said Tuesday to be “less than 10 percent” of the nationwide samples.

The following day Lazarus and HIWU executive director Ben Mosier met with university leaders who said they ordered their human-resources department to investigate Stanley, who was removed as director of the laboratory March 1. The university said in its own news release it is trying to fire Stanley, who is a tenured professor.

It was in March when HISA and HIWU began their own investigation because of “the discovery by HIWU of intentional misrepresentations that were made about sample analysis.”

The six-month-long investigation, which the federal regulators said is still open, revealed the Kentucky lab “failed to perform confirmatory analysis on 91 samples whose initial screening showed the potential presence of a prohibited substance and therefore required such analysis, instead reporting the samples as negative at the direction of ... Stanley.”

Against the wave of fake results that allowed dozens of doping violations to go unpunished, there were false positives that put two horsemen in position to be unfairly fined or suspended.

“We are going to make the horsemen whole financially,” Lazarus said. She added, “We’re also not going to require those second places who got the (first-place) purse as a consequence of the disqualification to repay the money given how much time has gone.”

Lazarus and Mosier, who also was on Tuesday’s Zoom call, would not say specifically who the affected horsemen were. They referred reporters to the HIWU website that details fines and suspensions. There were no new entries Tuesday afternoon that appeared to reference either case.

All 91 samples that were put into question at the Kentucky lab were retested, but it was not clear how many flagged newly reported violations. HISA did say it would foot the bill for B samples to be tested if that is what the affected owners and trainers want.

HISA and HIWU called on the University of Kentucky to pay back the money that was spent on the faulty tests.

“The university has agreed to work with us to reimburse the money,” Lazarus said. “They’ve taken responsibility, and they’ve acknowledged it. This is industry money, so it’s something that we have a fiscal responsibility and a duty to recover. It’s definitely above 1 million. It would be in that range.”

Lazarus stopped short of declaring there could be criminal charges brought, but her inference came through loud and clear.

“What I can say is we’re cooperating with federal law enforcement,” she said. “It’s in their hands. Whether or not they determine that there’s anything criminal to take forward will obviously be subject to their investigation and their discretion.”

Lazarus also would not say whether Stanley was acting alone or if he was working for anyone to cook the books on the drug tests.

“That is really related to the law-enforcement investigation,” she said. “We don’t know motive, and that I imagine will be their focus. Our job was obviously to determine what went wrong specifically, and how do we rectify. The other stuff is really for law enforcement.”

A university news release Tuesday said Stanley “did not follow appropriate business practices in reporting equine drug tests and did not honor certain standards and obligations.”

One person working in the university lab is related to a horseman registered with HISA, but Lazarus and Mosier would not say who it is.

“That information would need to be disclosed by the university if they wish to do so,” Mosier said.

Mosier emphasized that this case should serve notice that labs are not on their own anymore to be trusted with unsupervised testing.

“They’re no longer working in silos with their individual commissions,” he said. “Now they’re required to work together and share their work with their peers.”

With the Kentucky facility currently out of the picture, HIWU has four labs doing its testing in California, Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

HISA said it will have its new accreditation program in full effect Jan. 1. The HISA equine analytical-laboratory accreditation, or HEAL for short, already is being phased into place. It sets new standards that all its testing labs must pass, something HISA said will provide “a more robust equine quality-assurance scheme sample program.”