Supreme Court Rejects ‘Pharma Bro’ Shkreli’s Appeal of $64.6 Million Punishment

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear former pharmaceutical company CEO Martin Shkreli’s appeal of a $64.6 million financial penalty imposed by a judge after he raised the price of a life-saving drug by more than 4,000 percent.

The justices rejected Shkreli’s appeal of a lower court decision to uphold the sentence, equal to the profits he and one of his former companies made by raising the price of the drug Daraprim in 2015. Shkreli, then 30, got the nickname. “Pharma Bro” in the media. His sentence was imposed in 2022 by US District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan.

Shkreli’s appeal did not challenge a lifetime ban from the drug industry also imposed by Cote.

The judge cited Shkreli’s “particularly heartless and coercive” tactics to monopolize Daraprim and keep generic rivals out of the market. Cote imposed the sanctions in a civil antitrust case brought by the US Federal Trade Commission along with the states of New York, California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Shkreli asked the Supreme Court to review a January decision by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, which upheld the $64.6 million fine as well as the industry ban.

Shkreli, 41, gained notoriety when, as chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, he raised the price of Daraprim overnight to $750 per tablet from $17.50.

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 conspiring to defraud investors in another drugmaker.

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 forfeit profits he never personally received or controlled, and that two other federal appeals courts have limited defendants’ liability in personal earnings.

The states argued that the appeal to the Supreme Court was a “flawed vehicle” to review Shkreli’s profits because lower courts never addressed the issue.

Since his release from prison in May 2022, Shkreli has worked as a software developer and as a consultant for a law firm.

He was sued separately by digital art collective PleasrDAO for allegedly streaming a single album by hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan. PleasrDAO bought the album after the US government seized it from Shkreli in his criminal case.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)