Shkreli ordered to return $64M, is barred from drug industry

Source: AP

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and JENNIFER PELTZ

NEW YORK (AP) — Martin Shkreli must return $64.6 million in profits he and his former company reaped from jacking up the price and monopolizing the market for a lifesaving drug, a federal judge ruled Friday while also barring the provocative, imprisoned ex-CEO from the pharmaceutical industry for the rest of his life.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote’s ruling came several weeks after a seven-day bench trial in December that featured recordings of conversations that Cote said showed Shkreli continuing to exert control over the company, Vyera Pharmaceuticals LLC, from behind bars and discussing ways to thwart generic versions of its lucrative drug, Daraprim.

“Shkreli was no side player in, or a ‘remote, unrelated’ beneficiary of Vyera’s scheme,” Cote wrote in a 135-page opinion. “He was the mastermind of its illegal conduct and the person principally responsible for it throughout the years.”

The Federal Trade Commission and seven states brought the case in 2020 against the man known in the media as “Pharma Bro,” about two years after he was sentenced to prison in an unrelated securities fraud scheme.



FILE - Former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli attends the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 4, 2016. A federal judge on Friday, Jan. 14, 2022 ordered Shkreli to return $64.6 million in profits he and his company reaped from inflating the price of the life-saving drug Daraprim and barred him from participating in the pharmaceutical industry for the rest of his life. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)


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