NEW YORK - A Brooklyn pharmacy 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'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.

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 pharmacies 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 performance-enhancing drugs during a regulatory inspection there, most of which had been shipped to the U.S. from China.

An attorney for the pharmacy, Paul Aufrichtig, said Wednesday that the shop was cooperating with investigators, and denied that its steroid and hormone sales amounted to a criminal enterprise. “Nobody has done anything illegal, to my knowledge,” he said.

Law enforcement agents on Wednesday wouldn't say whether the pharmacy might face charges or disciplinary action.

Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares said his investigators began monitoring the shop's activities after its name surfaced in its probe of Signature.

After the Orlando company was raided and shut down, he said, as many as five “wellness centers” that had relied on it 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.”

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