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Gary Matthews of the Los Angeles Angels.
Former Major League baseball star Jose Canseco.
Former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield.
Danny Bonduce, star of the former TV show "The Partridge Family".
These celebrities and sports stars have been implicated in the multistate investigation into the illegal sales of steroids over the Internet.
Albany County district attorney David Soares was in Orlando, Fla. Tuesday when federal and state narcotics agents executed search warrants on several Signature Phamarcies in Orlando and arrested pharmacists and managers on warrants issued as the result of an investigation by an Albany County Grand Jury.
Stan and Naomi Loomis, licensed pharmacists who own the Signature Pharmacy in downtown Orlando and another pharmacy nearby, were arrested along with Stan's brother, Mike Loomis. Kirk Calvert, said to be the manager of the drugstores, was charged along with the others with criminal diversion of prescription medications and prescriptions, criminal sale of a controlled substance and insurance fraud.
Other arrests were made but not identified and it is likely more arrests will follow including at least two dozen doctors who alleged wrote prescriptions for drugs without ever seeing the "patient".
In a prepared statement, Soares said the pharmacies are "believed to supply a large portion of the national market of the illegal online sale of anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and other controlled substances".
The downtown Orlando pharmacy sold mostly bodybuilding supplements and housed a high-tech drug manufacturing laboratory. The two locations for Signature Pharmacy did about $36 million in business last year, authorities said, up for income reported in 2002 of about $500,000.
Soares and other law enforcement officials have alleged that at least $250,000 were shipped directly into Albany County for sales and distribution and the sales in New York State totaled $10 million.
The arrests followed a year-long investigation. Soares said that his office was involved because the first doctor to write a prescription for steroids without seeing the patient had been prosecuted in Albany County.
According to Soares, five New York doctors will face professional disciplinary charges. Three Texas physicians have already been arrested, he said.
Soares said that as a result of New York's involvement in the case, at least 24 individuals will face felony charges including six physicians and three pharmacists.
Agencies involved in the investigation and arrests were the state departments of Health and Insurance, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department and the Florida Attorney General's office.
So far, Soares and other officials have refused to name any recipients of the steroids, saying that the probe was focused on distributors and producers of the drugs. 2-28-07
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© 2007 North
Country Gazette
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