NEW YORK (1010 WINS)  -- Six police officers are being investigated for improperly using prescriptions to obtain anabolic steroids for personal use, according to the New York City Police Department. 

1010 WINS AUDIO: Juliet Papa reports

Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne in a statement released Tuesday morning said, "Three of those six have been tested; another three are expected to be tested. Results of the tests are pending. A pharmacy employee has been arrested in connection with the investigation. While the officers' conduct being investigated could result in disciplinary action, no arrests of police officers are anticipated."

Browne said, "The New York Post erroneously reported this morning that as many as 30 police officers had been tested for possible steroid use when, in fact, only three were."

A Grand Jury will be investigating the alleged operation with alleged links to the Gambino crime family, 1010 WINS Juliet Papa reported.

Lowen's pharmacy was targeted in a state steroids investigation transformed itself over the past three years from an old-fashioned neighborhood druggist, to a nationwide supplier of substances used to enhance athletic performance, according to investigators and court records.

Investigators with the state health department's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement said they seized $7.5 million of dollars worth of human growth hormone and anabolic steroids on Monday and Tuesday from Lowen's Pharmacy, a decades-old shop in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge section. The pharmacy reopened on Wednesday.

The pharmacy's vice president, Edward Letendre, was arrested during the raid. Police initially planned to charge him with diverting controlled substances, but he was released by the Brooklyn District Attorney's office and has not been charged in the case.

Prosecutors declined to comment on the move, other than to say that the case would be presented to a grand jury.

It is not illegal in New York for a pharmacy to dispense steroids and human growth hormone for valid medical purposes, but their activities are tightly regulated and it is a crime for a doctor to prescribe drugs without examining the patient.

State health officials said the raid was an offshoot of the Albany County District Attorney's investigation into Signature Pharmacy, an Orlando, Fla. company whose client lists reportedly included many professional athletes.

Lowen's had already been raided once in connection with the probe. In May, state officials seized about $200,000 worth of potentially performance-enhancing drugs during a regulatory inspection there, most of which had been shipped to the U.S. from China.

Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares said that after Signature was raided and shut down in February, as many as five "wellness centers'' that had relied on the Orlando company for drugs turned to other suppliers, including Lowen's.

"Lowen's came on our radar very early on,'' he said Wednesday. "The other five who now lost their source of supply approached Lowen's and were dealing with Lowen's, so we were on to Lowen's as well.''

Even before the raids, the Brooklyn pharmacy already had an unusual pedigree.

Records indicate that the building where the pharmacy is located is owned by Julius Nasso, the movie producer who was sentenced to a year in prison in 2004 for plotting to have associates of the Gambino crime family shake down the action-film star Steven Seagal over an alleged debt.

After the initial raid on Lowen's in May, Nasso's publicist, Richard Rubenstein, told the New York Daily News that the pharmacy was then co-owned by Nasso's son. He added that neither father nor son were substantially involved in the operation of the business. Rubenstein did not return phone messages Wednesday.

According to court records, Lowen's rapid growth began in late 2004, after it struck up a business partnership with the proprietor of an alternative health clinic in Los Angeles.

In a lawsuit filed this year, Shirley Elzinger, a health practitioner in Beverly Hills, said she entered into a deal in which she agreed to help the store establish a new "compounding'' division, that would manufacture hormone replacement medications from raw materials.

Elzinger said she turned over equipment and a client list from her existing drug compounding pharmacy, and in return was supposed to have received an ownership share in Lowen's.

Instead, she claimed in the suit, the co-owners of the business cheated her out of at least $3 million in revenues.

A woman who answered the phone at Lowen's said no one was available to talk about the raids Wednesday. Letendre's phone number on Staten Island is unlisted. A lawyer who has represented the pharmacy and its owners, Paul Aufrichtig, did not respond to phone or e-mail messages. Elzinger also did not respond to a phone message. Her attorney declined to comment.

Photo from Juliet Papa

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