‘Disruptive and disrespectful’: How UK learned former equine lab director faked results

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Problems with the University of Kentucky lab that was supposed to test racehorse samples for performance enhancing drugs began from the moment the national anti-doping regulatory agency, the Horseracing Safety & Integrity Authority , took over.

But racing officials didn’t know how bad things were until they accidentally discovered lab director Scott Stanley had lied multiple times and faked test results, including on samples suspected in blood doping cases.

Now, after investigations by the integrity authority (commonly known in equine and racing circles as HISA, the private anti-doping regulatory body created in 2020 by Congress) and by UK auditors, the lab’s renowned director is being fired and federal authorities are looking into the significant issues uncovered.

Equine drug expert Scott Stanley, a UK graduate, had been recruited from California to Kentucky to establish an equine drug testing lab and serve as its director. It’s a prestigious position that also included a professor position endowed by Keeneland with virtually no oversight.

Stanley has declined to be interviewed in the investigation process and could not be reached by Herald-Leader reporters on Wednesday.

The lab was established in 2019 through a contract with the U.S. Equestrian Federation to drug test show horses. In 2022, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission also began using the UK center to drug test Thoroughbred, Standardbred and Quarter Horse racehorses.

Director of UK equine testing lab fired, federal law enforcement investigating

When the effort to establish a national racing authority culminated in Congressional action in 2020, Stanley played a role.

He sat on the national committee that crafted HISA’s Anti-Doping and Medication Control program that wrote the rules until he was asked to resign in spring 2023.

Stanley ran the University of Kentucky lab that had handled drug testing for the state since at least 2022. But with the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission turning over testing control to the new private regulatory agency, Stanley’s role was deemed a conflict of interest.

Unprofessional behavior, delayed test results

From the moment the new testing program began in May 2023, “the behavior of Dr. Stanley and some of his staff ... was challenging,” according to the regulators’ report. Stanley and his staff ignored emails and were “frequently unprofessional,” according to an investigation released by HISA on Sept. 18.

Stanley’s lab repeatedly missed deadlines for reporting test results “which caused significant inconvenience to horsemen,” according to the report.

Stanley and his team blamed developers and the UK system. Results that were delivered lacked proper documentation and had to be revised multiple times.

In weekly calls with other lab directors, Stanley was “disruptive and disrespectful to colleagues.” And he and the UK lab staff developed such a “contentious relationship” with the staff of the Florida Gaming Control Commission and racetracks there that both asked to transfer analysis of their racehorse testing samples to another lab.

Some Florida sample collection workers threatened to resign because of treatment by Stanley. HISA raised the problem with Stanley’s superiors at the University of Kentucky on multiple occasions and were told it would be addressed, but “the issues remained unresolved.”

By February 2024, HISA and its testing arm, the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit that is runs the anti-doping program, had had enough.

Ben Mosier, executive director of the integrity and welfare unit , and HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus met with Nancy Cox, dean of the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment on Feb. 13 to tell her they would no longer be sending samples from Florida to the UK lab.

Cox dropped her own bombshell at that meeting: UK was conducting “a human resources-related investigation of Dr. Stanley and his management” of the lab, the report revealed.

During the investigation, UK officials said, Stanley’s access to the lab had been largely cut off.

It’s unclear exactly what UK was investigating at that time. Auditors later documented two relationships Stanley had that “may constitute a conflict of interest.”

One involved Stanley’s consulting with a maker of scientific equipment that supplied the UK lab while Stanley was being paid $20,000 a year since at least 2019. He only disclosed this relationship once, in 2023.

The other involved a “personal relationship” with a woman for whom Stanley created a lab position and “orchestrated her hiring” in October 2023, according to the audit.

In September, according to an exhibit in UK’s audit report, Stanley emailed a draft cover letter for the woman. While her connections to the industry were disclosed on the application, auditors said, her relationship with Stanley never was.

She no longer works at the UK lab, Cox confirmed.

In January 2024, Stanley sent a letter on the UK lab’s letterhead to one of the female employee’s teachers at Eastern Kentucky University requesting an excused absence from class for “her assistance in-person” for what was actually an overnight trip to Palm Beach, Florida, for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association’s annual Eclipse Awards banquet.

Regulators end UK lab testing

The Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit stopped sending samples from Kentucky races to the UK lab three days after meeting with Cox in February. On March 1, UK advised the regulators Stanley had been removed as director of the lab.

At this point, according to the integrity and welfare unit’s report, the regulators were “not yet aware of any deficiencies related to the analyses performed” on the samples sent to the lab.

But they knew that the lab had failed to detect one controlled medication, a corticosteroid used to control pain, submitted as part of a racing quality assurance program.

Despite all the delays and general rudeness, until February 2024 HIWU had continued to use the UK lab and in November 2023 had sent a blood sample from another lab. The sample had tested positive for erythropoietin, a banned blood doping agent known as EPO.

Stanley agreed to perform confirmatory analysis, which would require precise testing.

For nearly two months, the group called, emailed and asked Stanley in person for the results. Finally, in late December, Stanley said he’d analyzed the sample once and had not confirmed the presence of EPO but Stanley said they would repeat the analysis to be sure.

In January 2024, Stanley told HIWU they hadn’t found it.

Then a strange thing happened: In February, after the regulators stopped sending samples to UK, the agency contacted the lab to see how much of the blood sample was left because they were considering having it tested at another lab to corroborate the negative finding.

The UK lab gave a stunning answer: The computer system showed the sample had never been tested, had never been opened. It was still sitting, sealed, in the UK lab’s storage refrigerator.

HIWU informed UK officials that they had evidence of falsified test results, which UK auditors later confirmed. (A later analysis of the blood sample by another lab could not confirm the presence of EPO, according to the report.)

Both UK and the regulators began investigating the lab activities in March. Meanwhile, the Racing Medication Testing Consortium, a separate equine drug group that sets standards for labs, suspended the lab’s accreditation on March 7; this apparently was unrelated to HIWU’s investigation.

UK begins investigating Stanley

UK Internal Audit began its investigation after learning about the falsified erythropoietin tests.

As the audit report makes clear, a lot was at stake: The horse industry generates $6.5 billion in economic activity, with $2.7 billion from the Thoroughbred sector alone. UK and specifically the College of Agriculture, Food and the Environment “plays a major role in supporting this critical industry through its Ag Equine Programs.”

Having a top-flight drug-testing lab in-state had long been a stated goal of the Kentucky horse industry.

The auditors made several disturbing observations in their report: The kind of testing that Stanley had agreed to do on the EPO sample wasn’t even possible at the UK lab “as it had neither the equipment in its lab nor the standard operating procedures in place to perform EPO confirmation testing.” Stanley had lied about his lab’s capabilities.

UK auditors went through the billing records for 240 samples and found that in four cases, “all of which were evidence in investigations,” documentation of the results was missing. In at least two of the cases, Stanley had emailed regulators that horses had failed drug tests but the records were missing.

While auditors weren’t able to substantiate other cases of falsified results, they found that the lab’s systems were so poorly controlled that Stanley had “unfettered access to samples” and the records with “numerous opportunities ... that could potentially allow for sample tampering or records to be changed.”

Any lab employee would be able “to alter results while eluding identification,” auditors said, “a fact which has precluded (University of Kentucky Internal Audit) from determining whether any additional samples may have been altered, amended or otherwise falsified and by whom.”

As lab director, auditors said, Stanley had such “unhindered access” that “samples (could) be tampered with and resealed in the coolers,” test results could be changed or misreported “all while avoiding detection.”

What HISA found

The racing regulators began interviewing current and former UK lab staff and combing through records of between 8,000-9,000 samples sent over eight months from Kentucky and Florida racetracks. And they began transferring samples still at the UK lab to other testing labs.

As they examined the records, racing regulators made another stunning find: Tests from nearly 150 separate blood and urine samples had failed initial screening, but the lab was missing documentation that they had followed up with more testing.

The regulators eventually determined some of the samples actually had received further testing, while others hadn’t and the samples had been discarded.

Only 36 samples were still in the UK lab; these were tested at other labs, where the two results were confirmed and HISA will pursue the violations. Two other samples were ruled to be false positives, possibly because the remaining samples had degraded.

Stanley declines comment

HIWU requested an interview with Stanley through his attorney in June, but Stanley declined.

UK auditors also attempted to speak with Stanley, but he did not respond.

HISA has requested repayment from UK “above $1 million” for services that were never actually provided, according to the report and Lazarus.

Kentucky’s racing authority, now called the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corp., is conducting its own investigation, according to executive director Jamie Eads. It’s unclear how many samples from Kentucky might have been compromised or how many violations cases could be impacted, if any.

Eads said the University of Kentucky is cooperating with the investigation.