By Luis Fernando Llosa and L. Jon Wertheim

	Courtesy of The Orlando Sentinel

• No birth date was indicated on the prescriptions, but according to the Applied database, former Atlanta Braves reliever John Rocker received two prescriptions for somatropin between April and July 2003. (Through his spokeswoman, Rocker denied any knowledge of the prescription and denied ever receiving a banned substance.)

Sources tell SI that the clients appearing on invoices and customer lists are unlikely to face prosecution, because the targets of the raids and investigations are the members of the network of suppliers. "Our focus here is to shut down distribution channels," says Albany County district attorney David Soares, one of the leaders of the investigation. And because the reports only allege receipt (and in some cases, purchase) of the banned drugs -- not usage -- the athletes are unlikely to face disciplinary action from their respective leagues or governing bodies. (Major League Baseball didn't add HGH to its list of banned substances until 2005.) Still, the information offers a clear and chilling glimpse into just how easily banned substances, including steroids and HGH, can be obtained by anyone, of any age, who possesses Internet access and a credit card.

The origins of this wide-scale, multi-agency investigation can be traced to upstate New York. In the fall of 2004 state narcotics investigators based in Albany noticed that a local doctor, David Stephenson, was running a website, docstat.com, and was purchasing massive quantities of a variety of drugs, including narcotics and steroids. According to authorities, Applied was his chief supplier. After receiving the drugs at his residence, Stephenson repackaged them and resold them to "patients" who had visited his website. One investigator placed an order through docstat.com, claiming to be an overweight pilot with a heroin addiction and a drinking problem. As part of a questionnaire offered when registering on the site, clients were asked the reason they were seeking particular drugs. The investigator responded that he needed prescriptions for hydrocodone, methadone, nandrolone, Ritalin and testosterone because "I want to get high to fly." Within days the drugs arrived by way of express mail.

In the summer of 2005 Stephenson pleaded guilty to felony criminal sale of a controlled substance; he is serving a six-year jail sentence. The Stephenson case, however, stood for much more than a rogue doctor abusing his license. Studying the chain of supply, agents from Albany County were able to lay bare a drug pipeline that marries the power of the Internet with spurious antiaging centers, board-certified compounding pharmacies and venal doctors. Soon, the agents shared their findings with federal and state authorities across the country.

As Mark Haskins, a senior investigator for New York State's Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, explains it, "Basically you have an antiaging clinic with an Internet presence. [Clinic operators] put the product on the Internet. The customer finds them online, fills out a brief questionnaire and requests steroids, hormone therapy, whatever. Someone from the clinic contacts the customer and then develops a prescription for the steroid treatment or hormone treatment. Then [the clinic] sends or e-mails the prescription to a doctor, who is often not even in the same state. He'll sign it [because] he's being paid by the clinic, usually $20 to $50 for every signature. The signed prescriptions get faxed to the compounding pharmacies, which know from the very beginning that there is no doctor-patient relationship. The pharmacy then sends the product to the customer."