May 12, 2007: Vol. 30, No. 19
Past issues
The Paper in print
RSS feeds
Print edition (PDF)
Email Alerts- The current issue
- Neighborhood Map
- Bay Ridge
- Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights
- Brooklyn Heights
- Downtown, DUMBO
- Carroll Gardens
- Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Boerum Hill
- Fort Greene
- Clinton Hill, Crown Heights
- North Brooklyn
- Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick
- Park Slope
- Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights
- GO Brooklyn
- Brooklyn Cyclones
- Not Just Nets
- Police Blotter
- Perspective
- Parenting
- Politics
- Transit
- Podcasts
- The Brooklyn Bride
- Brooklyn Boom
- Classifieds
- Merchant news
- About The Paper
- RSS Feeds
-
Bay Ridge pharmacy raided in steroid probe
for The Brooklyn Paper
State drug enforcement officers raided this Bay Ridge pharmacy on Wednesday and removed hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal steroids.
Similar stories
Print this story
digg
del.icio.usState drug enforcement authorities raided a popular Bay Ridge mom-and-pop pharmacy on Wednesday, seizing hundreds of thousand of dollars worth of steroids and growth hormones.
Workers at Lowen’s Pharmacy were stunned as investigators from the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement entered the store and began a search that yielded $200,000 worth of the illegal performance-enhancing medications.
The investigation was first reported Thursday by the New York Daily News. The raid was confirmed by the Albany County District Attorney’s office.
Officials aren’t calling it a “raid,” per se, because narcotics officers are allowed to randomly search any state-regulated pharmacy without a warrant if there is reasonable cause to suspect something untoward is going on.
Those fears were apparently generated by an unrelated investigation by the Albany DA into a pharmacy chain based in Florida.
The Lowen’s “name had come up frequently” in that investigation, Assistant District Attorney Chris Baynes told the News.
Investigators took stacks of papers, which Baynes said would likely contain the names of professional athletes who are using steroids.
“Reason holds that there would be [names], based on prior experience,” he said.
Prior raids in Florida have resulted in indictments against 21 people for selling steroids over the Internet.
Baynes said Lowen’s had filled the gap — and the prescriptions — after the Florida chain was cracked.
Baynes told the News that the Lowen’s fax machine was buzzing with new orders coming in from all over the country, even as the investigators were doing their work.
On Thursday, it was business as usual at Lowen’s, whose stately, old-style building is at the corner of Third Avenue and 69th Street.
“Why should I comment to you? We have no comment,” said the pharmacist.
A regular customer told The Brooklyn Paper that Lowen’s “has a fantastic reputation in the community.”
“I imagine this is all a misunderstanding,” she added.
With the store open, customers browsed the aisles like any normal day, filling prescriptions, stocking up on sunscreen and getting a last-minute card for Mother’s Day.
There was no outward sign that anything had changed.
It’s not the first time Lowen’s has been linked to a big news story.
Days after the 9-11 attacks, several Bay Ridge residents claimed that hijacker Mohammad Atta was a regular customer at the store.
©2007 The Brooklyn Paper
Enter your comment below
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.
