Martin Shkreli, best known as the “pharma bro” responsible for jacking up the price of and monopolizing the market for a lifesaving drug, has been barred from the pharmaceutical industry for life. He also must return $64.6 million in profits he made from the price gauging.
“Shkreli was no side player in, or a ‘remote, unrelated’ beneficiary of Vyera’s scheme,” U.S. District Judge Denise Cote wrote in her 135-page opinion. “He was the mastermind of its illegal conduct and the person principally responsible for it throughout the years.”
Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Shkreli raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after obtaining exclusive rights back in 2015, while CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals.
New York Attorney General Letitia James referenced Shkreli’s purchase of the Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, in her statement responding to the ruling.
“The powerful don’t get to make their own rules, despite Shkreli thinking cash rules everything around him,” James tweeted.
She added: “‘Envy, greed, lust, and hate,’ don’t just ‘separate,’ but they obviously motivated Mr. Shkreli and his partner to illegally jack up the price of a life-saving drug as Americans’ lives hung in the balance. But Americans can rest easy because Martin Shkreli is a pharma bro no more.”
[Via]