Martin Shkreli Gets Lifetime Ban From the Industry, Must Return $65 Million From Scheme

A federal judge has banned the former biotech CEO Martin Shkreli, nicknamed “Pharma Bro,” from the pharmaceutical industry, ordering him to pay about $65 million he made in an anticompetitive scheme for which he was convicted in 2017.

The Federal Trade Commission and seven states sued in January 2020, accusing Vyera Pharmaceuticals — formerly Shkreli’s company Turing — of increasing the price of the anti-parasitic Daraprim by more than 4,000 percent from $17.50 to $750 a pill in 2015. Daraprim treats toxoplasmosis, a potentially fatal parasitic disease for HIV patients and other immunocompromised people.

Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said in her opinion that she feared he would return to his fraudulent behavior if allowed to reenter the industry.

“Shkreli has not expressed remorse or any awareness that his actions violated the law,” she wrote. “While he takes full responsibility in his direct testimony for the increase of Daraprim’s price … he denies responsibility for virtually anything else.”

Shkreli is now serving a seven-year prison sentence.