Yesterday, paparazzi agency X17 reported that they called the Los Angeles police department and were assured that a story originating with TMZ about an active investigation into the alleged drugging of Britney’s Spears by her hanger-on, Sam Lutfi, was false. As X17 seems to have a relationship with Lutfi to secure photos of Britney and hasn’t reported anything negative about him, we weren’t so ready to accept their claims as accurate.

TMZ then ran another story with more details into the investigation, saying that it was “well underway” and that it has “been assigned to Robbery Homicide” in order to avoid any leaks to the media. They claim that witnesses have already been interviewed, and that the investigation was put on hold because of the unrelated death of a police officer, but that it was “back on track.”

It sounds like they have an inside source that is feeding them these details, which don’t come off like they’re fabricated. Radar Online looked into it, though, and the LAPD spokesperson denied up and down that there’s any investigation:

“We don’t have anything,” a spokesperson for the LAPD tells Radar. Then she put us on hold and rang the Major Crimes Department to double check but returned a few minutes later to confirm that the department is not investigating Lutfi. She vowed to look further into the claim to see if any division was investigating Lutfi but said, “I don’t see any concrete evidence of a report on file. I don’t even know if there’s a crime that has occurred.”

[From RadarOnline]

Meanwhile Lutfi’s rep, Michael Sands, has said the TMZ report is not true, and it sound like he was initially confused by TMZ head Harvey Levin into commenting on it before he had a chance to look into it:

TMZ claimed Sands was aware of the investigation, but Sands has since blasted out e-mails to media calling the TMZ report dead wrong. “I suggest that TMZ and others know what they are speaking about before writing stories,” Sands wrote earlier today. He says TMZ chief Harvey Levin had told him about the alleged investigation before others at TMZ called asking for comment. “I was playing along,” he says.

[From RadarOnline]

Lutfi’s rep also says that Britney’s mom Lynne helped Lutfi get a deal representing a jewelry company called Diamond Hybrid, and that “I don’t know why Lynne now wants to poison the world against Sam.”

Lutfi has still not been served papers notifying him of the restraining order against him.

Despite the fact that TMZ annoys me on a daily basis, I hope they’re right about this and that there is an investigation underway that the LAPD is trying to keep under wraps. If this was just a non-celebrity, they probably wouldn’t do much with a case like this, because it seems hard to prove. You would hope that these allegations would be taken seriously and investigated no matter who was involved, though. This is a woman who was in the psychiatric ward twice, and if her erratic behavior could be due to massive doses of drugs given to her without her knowledge, that seems like something that needs to looked into and prosecuted.

Britney is shown out getting her hair done on 2/19/08. Two photographers were arrested that night after a scuffle outside the salon. She didn’t wear panties then, either, but thankfully we don’t have those photos. Cops arrested two more photographers outside of Villa nightclub a little later that night, and it looks like the LA police are starting to crack down on the paparazzi. TMZ head Harvey Levin says he doesn’t understand why they chose those two photographers outside of Villa, because they were not doing any harm and it was not a dangerous situation. [Details from AP Article]