Martin Shkreli served his prison sentence and paid a $64.6 million fine, but the administrative state isn't letting go—the FTC and seven states just asked a federal judge to hold him in contempt and potentially jail him for livestreaming his biotech stock trades.
Shkreli was slapped with a lifetime industry ban in 2022 for hiking the price of the anti-parasitic drug Daraprim. Now, the FTC claims that by trading stocks and publicly discussing them on social media, he flagrantly violated that ban. If talking about stocks on X and YouTube is grounds for contempt and incarceration, no American's livelihood is safe from perpetual bureaucratic punishment.
On Tuesday, the FTC and attorneys general from New York, California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia filed a motion in Manhattan federal court. They allege that since his release from prison in May 2022, Shkreli traded stocks in at least 60 pharmaceutical companies and used platforms like YouTube, X, and Reddit to broadcast his opinions.
During one livestream, Shkreli told viewers, “I’m showing you how to trade and invest in biotech,” according to the FTC. In another, he allegedly called his strategy a “magic trick,” saying, “It doesn’t matter what trades I make because I can always find a couple of biotech stocks to smoke.” The FTC claims he even used his streams to organize campaigns to short pharma stocks.
To enforce compliance, the bureaucrats are demanding Shkreli divest all pharma stocks, pay fines equal to his profits without accounting for losses, and face “clear and escalating consequences – including additional fines and incarceration.” They are also dragging his sister, Leonora Izerne, and partner, Chelsea Voss, into the fray, demanding they preserve evidence because they “appear to have assisted” him.
FTC Commissioner Mark Meador declared that breaches must be met with “consequences commensurate with the seriousness of the order.” New York Attorney General Letitia James added that a lifetime ban “isn't a suggestion” and accused Shkreli of market manipulation.
Shkreli’s original ban stemmed from a civil case finding he orchestrated an anticompetitive scheme to maintain a monopoly on Daraprim, raising the price from $17.50 to $750 per pill. The Second Circuit upheld the injunction in January 2024, and the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in October 2024. His criminal conviction for securities fraud was entirely unrelated, yet the system continues to merge the two to justify endless oversight.
Shkreli is an easy target, but the precedent here is dangerous. He did his time and paid his civil debt. Now the FTC is treating a man talking about stocks on the internet as a crisis demanding jail time. If bureaucrats can weaponize a lifetime ban to criminalize speech and trading after a sentence is served, the administrative state has the power to punish anyone, forever.
