A 60-year-old Somerset County cardiologist has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for unlawfully prescribing thousands of oxycodone pills, U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger announced.

Raymond Catania, of Warren, previously pleaded guilty in Trenton federal court to dispensing oxycodone outside his professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose.

He was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Wednesday.

Catania co-owned a private practice in Watchung, during which he issued prescriptions for the powerful painkiller to one patient and that patient’s wife, without a legitimate medical purpose, Sellinger said.

Over the course of about a year ending in March 2017, Catania prescribed more than 8,600 oxycodone 30 mg pills to the couple.

Oxycodone is an opioid with a high potential for addiction.

Drug overdose deaths involving prescription opioids rose from 3,442 in 1999 to 17,029 in 2017, according to federal data collected through the National Center for Health Statistics.

Catania also was fined $25,000 and sentenced to three years of supervised release, following the prison term.

Erin Vogt is a reporter and anchor for New Jersey 101.5. You can reach her at erin.vogt@townsquaremedia.com

Click here to contact an editor about feedback or a correction for this story.

LOOK: Here is the richest town in each state

Just saying the names of these towns immediately conjures up images of grand mansions, luxury cars, and ritzy restaurants. Read on to see which town in your home state took the title of the richest location and which place had the highest median income in the country. Who knows—your hometown might even be on this list.

Cape May, NJ: 15 wonderful places to visit

LOOK: Food history from the year you were born

From product innovations to major recalls, Stacker researched what happened in food history every year since 1921, according to news and government sources.
 

Here's where NJ legal weed is sold

The number of recreational cannabis dispensaries continues to grow, with close to two dozen state approvals given since the first adult recreational sales in the state back in April. Here is where the open sites are located.

LOOK: See America's 50 Best Beach Towns

Every beach town has its share of pluses and minuses, which got us thinking about what makes a beach town the best one to live in. To find out, Stacker consulted data from WalletHub, released June 17, 2020, that compares U.S. beach towns. Ratings are based on six categories: affordability, weather, safety, economy, education and health, and quality of life. The cities ranged in population from 10,000 to 150,000, but they had to have at least one local beach listed on TripAdvisor. Read the full methodology here. From those rankings, we selected the top 50. Readers who live in California and Florida will be unsurprised to learn that many of towns featured here are in one of those two states.

Keep reading to see if your favorite beach town made the cut.

More From Beach Radio