BRIEF—FTC asks federal court to hold 'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli in contempt

The US Federal Trade Commission has asked a federal judge to hold “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli in contempt for failing to provide the FTC with information needed to determine whether he is violating a previous order by the judge that banned him from working in the pharmaceutical industry for life.

In a motion filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the FTC and its state co-plaintiffs said Mr Shkreli has failed to comply with their requests that he turn over documents and sit for an interview as part of their investigation into whether he has violated the pharmaceutical industry ban by forming and operating his new company, “Druglike Inc.”

Druglike purports to revolutionize early-stage drug discovery through a decentralized computing network. Mr Shkreli is required to provide the information under compliance provisions of the February 2022 order.

In January 2022, US District Court Judge Denise Cote  held that Shkreli orchestrated an illegal anticompetitive scheme to perpetuate a monopoly for the life-saving drug Daraprim (pyrimethamine), the gold-standard treatment for a rare, potentially fatal parasitic infection known as toxoplasmosis.

Finding that Mr Shkreli’s conduct was “egregious, deliberate, repetitive, long-running, and ultimately dangerous,” the Court imposed a lifetime ban against Mr Shkreli participating in the pharmaceutical industry and found him liable for $64.6 million in disgorgement.