Lowen’s co-owner and pharmacist, the late John Rossi, some time this past fall posted the above blow-up of a ‘Letter to the Editor’ of The Bay Ridge Daily Eagle responding to last May’s ‘raid’ by state inspectors, implicating his pharmacy in a steroid scandal that reportedly had ties to organized crime.

The pharmacy is a beloved member of the Bay Ridge merchant community by residents who consider it the personification of this neighborhood’s friendly, small-town feel.

The letter was inset to an unrelated article on Lowen’s and Rossi, titled: “Lowen’s Pharmacy, Beacon of Service to Bay Ridge Families for 50 Years; Pharmacist John Rossi Building Loyal Clientel with Personal Service.”

excerpt from Rossi’s letter, here:

“… All our pharmacists and technicians are fully registered and have no mark against their records. Referring to recent news articles.

Lowen’s Drug was visited by officials in May 2007 and was found to have products that were distributed by a non-licensed company, DNP International.

Importantly, the products were FDA approved and did have proper certificate analysis.

The problem was not with the FDA approved product itself, but with the distribution company who was unlicensed. Lowen’s was not aware of this problem until officials notified us when they visited the store in May 2007.

At this time one of the officials called DNP and spoke to both the salesperson and the president of DNP making them aware they could not distribute the product without proper licensing.

After the visit we immediately stopped making the products in question. Any other products that we did make were made by legitimate doctors with proper licenses. Products were only made, as properly prescribed by doctors.

After the officials left in May we realized they left sealed products that were discontinued by our company for reasons stated above. By advice of our counsel we segregated these products away from the processing part of our pharmacy and never used them again.

We then filed a lawsuit in federal court against DNP International for selling us these products without DNP obtaining proper licensing for the distribution of these products. This lawsuit is currently pending.

When officials came back in October 2007, they found compliant products from licensed distributors with compliant physicians prescriptions. Upon the officials inspection in October they found segregated product that has been isolated for the Federal lawsuit that we had filed against DNP. Unfortunately, the officials exaggerated to the news media the value of this product and failed to acknowledge that this product was being segregated for the Federal lawsuit and was not in fact being used by Lowen’s.

Again, this product was not being used at this time and was set aside and isolated months ago when the authorities first visited us in May 2007.

Lowen’s and its pharmacists and employees have done nothing improper and have fully cooperated with these officials involved in the investigation since Lowen’s was first informed of the problem in May 2007.”