Martin Shkreli is barred from the drug industry and ordered to repay $64.6 million.
Martin Shkreli, the former pharmaceutical executive best known for unapologetically hiking the price of a lifesaving medication, must pay $64.6 million and will be barred for life from the drug industry for violating antitrust law, a federal court ordered on Friday.
Mr. Shkreli is serving a seven-year prison sentence for defrauding investors related to his work running two hedge funds and a different pharmaceutical company. That conviction is unrelated to the drug pricing saga that elevated him to notoriety. He is expected to be released this year.
In 2015, Mr. Shkreli — then a pharmaceutical entrepreneur in his early 30s not well known outside his industry — acquired a decades-old drug known as Daraprim, which is used to treat a life-threatening parasitic infection, and raised its price to $750 a tablet, from $13.50. The move alarmed politicians and the public, who were already worried about rising drug prices and the role that pharmaceutical companies can play in making medicines unaffordable.
Most pharmaceutical executives raise prices more quietly and gradually, and with reassurances about ensuring patient access, but Mr. Shkreli seemed unrepentant. He became known as “pharma bro” for his brash attitude in the face of criticism. The BBC called him possibly “the most hated man in America.”
