Victor Conte, CEO of SNAC (Scientific Nutrition For Advanced Conditioning) System and founder of the BALCO Laboratories, stands for a portrait at his company's office in San Carlos, California, U.S. August 2, 2016. Picture taken August 2, 2016. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

(Reuters) -Victor Conte, the convicted owner of the now-defunct BALCO laboratory and seminal figure at the centre of a global steroid scandal that included high-profile athletes such as baseball home run king Barry Bonds, has died at the age of 75.

Conte, who spent four months in prison and four months home detention after pleading guilty in 2005 to distributing steroids to professional and Olympic athletes, died on Monday, a sports nutrition company he founded said in a social media post.

"We are heartbroken by the passing of our fearless leader," SNAC System wrote in a post on Instagram that called Conte an "anti-doping advocate."

"We will honor his wishes. SNAC and his legacy will carry forward, strong and forever. We LOVE you, Conte!"

On SNAC's website, the company said Conte's BALCO years "forever changed him" and that he later became an anti-doping advocate but that his commitment to "guiding athletes to become their very best never wavered."

Conte started out as a professional musician, playing at one point with the funk band "Tower of Power," but went into the nutrition business in the early 1980s.

Conte ran a little Bay Area laboratory called BALCO on the outskirts of San Francisco that began to flourish by the late 1990s and ultimately became the epicenter of a massive doping scandal in the early 2000s.

He used a gregarious personality and self-taught knowledge of nutrition to gain access to some of the top names in sport, including disgraced sprinter Marion Jones and baseball sluggers Bonds and Jason Giambi, supplying them with the latest in performance-enhancing drugs.

Bonds was never formally found guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs in a court of law and has always denied any wrongdoing but overwhelming evidence and extensive documentation link him to the use of steroids.

"I never did snitch or roll or inform on anyone," Conte said in 2005 before he reported to federal prison for his role in the steroid scandal.

"From the very beginning I was a guy of full disclosure. I told all of the athletes I work with to the best of my ability what the risks and returns were of their association with me and the way we approached performance enhancement."

(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Additional reporting by Rory Carroll, editing by Pritha Sarkar)