Martin Shkreli is back in regulators' crosshairs, accused of ignoring the ban that was supposed to end his pharma career for good.
The FTC and attorneys general from seven states, including New York, California, and Illinois, filed a motion Tuesday asking a federal judge to hold Shkreli in contempt. They allege he has violated his 2022 lifetime pharmaceutical industry ban flagrantly and repeatedly, mainly by trading stock in dozens of drug companies and discussing the industry on social media livestreams. That coalition of states and the FTC originally sued Shkreli in 2020 over an anticompetitive scheme involving Daraprim, an anti-parasitic drug. That case produced the ban now in question.
Shkreli's reputation rests on raising Daraprim's price from $13.50 to $750 per pill virtually overnight while blocking generic competitors from the market, a scheme that made him a symbol of drug-pricing abuse. This contempt motion tests whether a regulatory ban actually holds once someone builds an audience by publicly flouting it.
He already served seven years for the fraud scheme behind that price hike. Now the question is whether a court order outranks a livestream.