A U.S. District Court judge has granted a request from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to permanently bar Martin Shkreli from serving as an officer or director of any publicly traded company, and fined the infamous “pharma bro” $1.39 million for violating securities laws between 2009 and 2014.
The ruling is the latest blow to Shkreli, who gained notoriety seven years ago after his company purchased an old and inexpensive, life-saving medicine and then boosted the price by 4,000% overnight. Last month, yet another federal court judge issued a separate decision ordering Shkreli to pay $64.6 million in profits and banned him for life from the pharmaceutical industry.
The episode fed into escalating complaints by Americans over the cost of prescription drugs, but also transformed Shkreli into a poster boy for pharmaceutical greed, especially after he regularly offered smug responses to an outraged public. He was later jailed for securities violations unrelated to his time running Turing Pharmaceuticals, which is now called Vyera Pharmaceuticals.
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