Doctor who treated Prince pays $30K for illegal prescription

MINNEAPOLIS -- A Minnesota doctor accused of illegally prescribing an opioid painkiller for Prince a week before the musician died from a fentanyl overdose has agreed to pay $30,000 to settle a federal civil violation, according to documents made public Thursday.

Prince was 57 when he was found alone and unresponsive in an elevator at his Paisley Park estate April 21, 2016. An autopsy found he died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin. State and federal authorities have been investigating the source of the fentanyl for nearly two years, and no one has been criminally charged.

But federal prosecutors and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration alleged Schulenberg, a family physician who saw Prince at least twice before he died, violated the Controlled Substances Act when he wrote a prescription in the name of someone else April 14, 2016.

The settlement, dated Monday, does not name Prince or make any references to the Prince investigation -- but search warrants previously released say Schulenberg told authorities he prescribed oxycodone to Prince on April 14 and put it under the name of Prince's bodyguard and close friend, Kirk Johnson, "for Prince's privacy." Schulenberg's attorney has disputed that.

Oxycodone, the generic name for the active ingredient in OxyContin, was not listed as a cause of Prince's death. But it is part of a family of painkillers driving the nation's overdose and addiction epidemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 2 million Americans abused or were addicted to prescription opioids, including oxycodone, in 2014.

A laboratory report obtained by The Associated Press notes one of the pills found in a prescription bottle in Paisley Park that bore Johnson's name tested positive for oxycodone.