Martin Shkreli got a lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry. The FTC now says he violated that lifetime ban. Turns out lifetime means something different when you're the guy who jacked up the price of Daraprim by 5,000 percent and became the most hated man in America for approximately eleven months until someone else came along.
The ban came after a trial found he ran an illegal monopoly scheme. A court said stay out of pharma forever. He apparently heard stay out of pharma until you feel like not staying out of pharma. The FTC and several states filed a contempt claim. They would like the court to explain the word lifetime to a man who once bought the only copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album for two million dollars.
Retail traders saw this headline and immediately started a Discord channel called Free Pharma Bro. They're pooling their stimmy checks to hire him as a consultant for their new healthtech startup. The pitch deck describes Daraprim as a misunderstood value play. Customer acquisition cost is listed as however much an emergency room visit costs.
Shkreli's defense will likely argue that advising companies from his living room doesn't technically count as being in the industry. He was simply offering his thoughts. Sharing his perspective. Providing strategic guidance to pharmaceutical executives who definitely were not paying him to do the exact thing he was banned from doing. Just a guy on the internet with opinions about drug pricing and a few NDAs.
The court will now decide if violating a lifetime ban counts as contempt or if Shkreli just misread the terms and conditions like everyone else.
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