IBC

This story is going to be much bigger then a story about Little Sarge. This is going to be huge and spread across several sports. The business model, however, would make most crack dealers envious ...

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A downtown pharmacy was raided by a law enforcement task force on Tuesday, the climax of a large New York state grand jury investigation into Internet drug sales that could expose widespread illicit steroid use by professional athletes and thousands of people across the nation.

... Tuesday's raid of Signature Pharmacy, an Orlando business that did an estimated $36 million in business last year, could expose a long list of sports figures, celebrities and others who have turned to Internet pharmacies for illegal drugs such as steroids, authorities said.

... In a related case in Mobile, Ala., two owners of Applied Pharmacy Services have been indicted by an Albany County grand jury. Their customer list allegedly includes former professional boxer and heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, Los Angeles Angels centerfielder Gary Matthews Jr., and retired baseball star Jose Canseco, an admitted steroid user.

... The Orlando pharmacy is owned and operated by a Florida couple, Stan and Naomi Loomis, who are both licensed pharmacists. In 2002, the company reported revenue of about $500,000. Then, driven by a booming Internet prescription market, and the referral business Signature received from various Web sites, revenue topped $35 million last year, authorities in the case said.

Among Signature's customers was Jason Grimsley, the former Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher who left baseball last year after mail-order steroids were seized at his Scottsdale home by federal agents from San Francisco involved in an ongoing investigation targeting steroid use in professional sports. Grimsley has not been charged with any crimes, but federal agents said he told them about widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs by Major League Baseball players.

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story. ... TextPage=1

Unless Barry Bonds was on that list of customers no one cares.

The 2/28 business story had a "business model, however, [that] would make most crack dealers envious ..." Today's is a story of luck - and is legal.

Cummington, MA - The windy road that leads up to where Matt White dreamed of building his dream home has a few landscaping stone businesses, but when the 29-year-old pitcher bought this 50-acre plot from his great aunt in 2003 for $50,000, he didn't think about that business. He simply couldn't get a mountaintop view any cheaper.

"I had been looking at property all over the place in the area and it was a great deal," says White, who has played less than 10 innings in the major league, but is hoping to get another shot in spring training with the Los Angeles Dodgers. "To have that kind of land for $50,000 was an outstanding deal."

Though White never got to build that dream house though, the deal is looking even better now -- much better.

After clearing four acres of land, White -- who has made $300,000 throughout his baseball career -- concluded there was so much rock, he had to get it checked out. So he called a local geologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who surveyed the land and told him that there could be as much as 24 million tons of mica schist rock on his property. With a market value price of $100 a ton, the raw materials could be worth more than $2 billion.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/17399247

That's right 2 BILLION. White said he doesn't feel like he's wealthy, which he isn't quite yet.

"Not at all. I don't live like a rich man," he said. "I'm a minor league guy who's played winter ball to make ends meet."

If it makes any difference he'll probably only be able to sell the property for maybe $50 to $100 million due to the cost of equipment and assocaited labor costs ...