Martin Shkreli—the ex-pharmaceutical executive infamous for illegally hiking the price of a lifesaving anti-parasitic drug by more than 4,000 percent and getting a seven-year prison sentence for the fraudulent scheme he used to do it—has been under a lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry since 2022. However, according to the Federal Trade Commission and the attorneys general of seven states, Shkreli has “flagrantly and repeatedly” violated that ban nearly the entire time—allegedly by trading stock in dozens of drug companies and discussing the industry during livestreams on social media. On Tuesday, the FTC and the seven states asked a federal judge to hold Shkreli in contempt for the alleged violations.
The states include New York, California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—the same states that joined the FTC in suing Shkreli in 2020 over the “elaborate anticompetitive scheme” involving the anti-parasitic drug, Daraprim. The scheme raised the price from $17.50 per pill to $750 per pill virtually overnight, while blocking generic competitors from entering the market. In 2022, the federal court recognized the “seriousness” of issuing such a lifetime industry ban, but ruled that “Shkreli’s egregious, deliberate, repetitive, long-running, and ultimately dangerous illegal conduct warrants imposition of an injunction of this scope.” The ban, among many things, “explicitly prohibits” Shkreli from owning stock in pharmaceutical companies and making public statements that could influence a pharmaceutical company’s business, according to the FTC and the states.
With the alleged violations, the FTC and the states are now seeking to force Shkreli to divest from all pharmaceutical companies and pay a fine equal to his profits from trading pharmaceutical company stocks. They also want the court to lay out “clear and escalating consequences” if Shkreli violates the ban in the future, including further financial penalties and incarceration.
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