Businessman sentenced for selling pharmaceutical drugs

Minneapolis (AP) — The owner of a Northfield pharmaceutical disposal company is sentenced to four years in prison for selling some of the drugs he was supposed to destroy or return to the manufacturers.

Forty-one-year-old Mark Andrew Goetz was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. Goetz earlier pleaded guilty to selling nearly 350 tablets of Xanax and more than 1,200 Oxycontin pills.

As the owner of Pharmaceutical Returns, Goetz was authorized to collect outdated, recalled or excess prescription drugs.

Prosecutors say that instead of incinerating them or returning them to the manufacturer, Goetz profited from them on the black market.