Film producer Julius Nasso denies any mafia involvement in Lowen’s Pharmacy, its compounding business or its large scale distribution of anabolic steroids and growth hormone. Julius Nasso was a long-time friend and former business partner of the principal owner and pharmacist John Rossi, who apparently committed suicide last month. While Nasso still owns the building where Lowen’s Pharmacy is located, his attorney claims Nasso has not had any ownership stake since 1988.
Nasso is a reputed Gambino crime family associate and pleaded guilty to an extortion conspiracy involving using mob muscle to shake down actor Steven Segal.
Nasso maintains there was no organized crime involvement with Lowen’s Pharmacy; John Rossi and Rossi’s son-in-law acted independently to start selling compounded anabolic steroids and growth hormone in 2004.
The drug store’s involvement in compounding steroids and human growth hormone appears to date back only a few years.
Court papers, filed in connection with a civil lawsuit, indicated that the pharmacy – an old-fashioned, 55-year-old shop in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge section – acquired the equipment, expertise and client lists of another compounding pharmacy in California in 2004. The owner of that business, now defunct, also provided training for some of Lowen’s staff.
Rossi and his son-in-law expanded the compounding business by attending conferences on “anti-aging medicine” in Florida, where they struck up partnerships to provide drugs to a small group of health clinics that sold steroids and hormones over the Internet.
Source: International Herald Tribune
About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
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