The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear former pharmaceutical company CEO Martin Shkreli’s challenge to a $64.6 million fine imposed by a judge after he raised the price of ‘a life-saving medicine of more than 4,000%.
The justices rejected Shkreli’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling upholding the penalty, equal to the profits he and one of his former companies made from raising the price of the drug Daraprim in 2015. Shkreli, then elderly in his thirties, received the nickname “Pharma Bro” in the media. His sentence was imposed in 2022 by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan.
Shkreli’s appeal did not challenge a lifetime ban on the pharmaceutical industry also imposed by Côté.
The judge cited Shkreli’s “particularly cruel and coercive” tactics to monopolize Daraprim and keep its generic competitors out of the market. Cote imposed the sanctions in a civil antitrust case brought by the Federal Trade Commission, as well as the states of New York, California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Shkreli asked the Supreme Court to review a January ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, which upheld the $64.6 million fine as well as the industry ban .
Now 41, Shkreli gained notoriety when, as chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, he raised the price of Daraprim overnight from $17.50 to $750 per pill.
Daraprim is used to treat a parasitic infection called toxoplasmosis, including in people with AIDS.
Shkreli later served more than four years in prison after being convicted in 2017 of defrauding investors in two hedge funds and attempting to defraud investors in another pharmaceutical manufacturer.
He argued in his appeal to the Supreme Court that he should not owe the full $64.6 million.
Shkreli said it was unfair to give up profits he never personally received or controlled, and two other federal appeals courts have limited defendants’ liability for personal gains.
The states countered that the appeal to the Supreme Court was a “poor instrument” for reviewing profits returned to Shkreli because lower courts had never addressed the issue.
Since his release from prison in May 2022, Shkreli has worked as a software developer and consultant for a law firm.
He was also sued by digital art collective PleasrDAO for allegedly streaming a one-of-a-kind album by hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan. PleasrDAO purchased the album after the government seized it from Shkreli as part of his criminal case.
