The Federal Trade Commission and seven states have asked US District Judge Denise Cote to hold Martin Shkreli in civil contempt. Their filing alleges that since his release from prison in May 2022 he has repeatedly violated the 2022 court order banning him from the pharmaceutical industry for life, by publicly trading pharmaceutical stocks and broadcasting opinions about drug companies.
The remedies sought are specific: divestment of any pharmaceutical holdings he still owns, a fine equal to his profits from pharmaceutical stock trading since February 4, 2022, an accounting of the trades, and escalating consequences for future violations, which the plaintiffs say could include incarceration. The states joining New York are California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Shkreli’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported.
The underlying order came from the Daraprim case. As chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Shkreli raised the price of the antiparasitic drug from $17.50 to $750 per tablet in 2015. Judge Cote found in 2022 that he had organized an anticompetitive scheme to preserve the monopoly and imposed the lifetime ban. He was separately convicted of securities fraud in 2017, sentenced to seven years, and released in 2022.
The filing is a motion, not a ruling. Its significance is institutional as much as personal: lifetime bans are rare remedies, and the FTC is arguing, in the words of the case, that an order defendants can ignore in public is an order that deters no one. How the court treats livestreamed trading and commentary, activity Shkreli presents as speech and investing rather than industry participation, will define what the ban actually covers.