FTC, States Accuse Martin Shkreli of Violating Lifetime Pharma Ban

Federal and state authorities have asked a judge to hold Martin Shkreli in civil contempt, accusing the former entrepreneur of influencing pharmaceutical stocks even though he is banned for life from being involved with the industry.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and attorneys general of seven states filed the request on Oct. 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. They allege that Shkreli traded shares in at least 60 pharmaceutical companies and discussed their businesses and management through livestreams on YouTube and posts on X and Reddit.

“Today’s action should serve as notice that the FTC will not hesitate to enforce violations of court orders,” Daniel Guarnera, director of the FTC’s bureau of competition, said in a statement accompanying the filing.

Shkreli, widely known as “Pharma Bro,” sparked a national debate in 2015 after Turing Pharmaceuticals, the company he founded, bought the rights to the medication Daraprim and raised its price from $17.50 to $750 per tablet. The drug treats toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection relatively common among Americans.

In a civil antitrust case brought by the FTC and the states, a federal court found that Shkreli had orchestrated a scheme to block lower-cost generic competition for Daraprim. In 2022, the court banned him from the pharmaceutical industry for life and ordered him to surrender $64.6 million in profits from the scheme.

The ban prohibits him from owning stakes in pharmaceutical companies or taking actions to influence or control their management or business, according to the regulators.

That case was separate from Shkreli’s 2017 securities-fraud conviction, for which he served more than four years in prison before his release in May 2022.

The FTC and state attorneys general now allege that Shkreli has since repeatedly violated the ban.

“After his release in May 2022, Shkreli wasted little time diving back into the pharmaceutical industry despite being permanently banned from doing so,” the FTC and state attorneys general alleged. “Shkreli’s YouTube livestreams show that Shkreli has been publicly trading in Pharmaceutical Company stocks since July 2022.”

One recent example involves a “trading challenge” announced in June 2026. According to the filing, Shkreli showed his YouTube audience a spreadsheet tracking a portfolio with a starting balance of $10 million.

Regulators said they identified trades involving 11 pharmaceutical companies during the challenge, including Pfizer and Moderna.

They are now asking a federal judge to hold Shkreli in contempt, order him to pay a fine equivalent to any profits he made on pharma-related trades, and to impose “clear and escalating consequences” on any future violations of the ban.

The states joining the FTC’s latest filing are New York, California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

The Epoch Times was unable to reach Shkreli or his attorney for comment.

In a post on X, Shkreli appeared to argue that efforts to hold him liable for his online commentary violated his First Amendment rights.

“Very surprising from [President Donald] Trump’s FTC. I could see totalitarian [New York Attorney General] Letitia James trying to limit a citizen’s free speech but not from Trump’s FTC,” he wrote in response to a user who suggested he could win the dispute on First Amendment grounds.