The FTC and attorneys general from seven states asked a federal judge to hold Martin Shkreli in contempt, alleging the securities fraudster flouted a lifetime pharmaceutical ban through stock trades and livestreams.
Federal regulators and bipartisan state enforcers filed the motion in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. They say Martin Shkreli has broken a permanent injunction that bars him from the drug industry since his release from prison in May 2022.
The Daily Caller reported that the Federal Trade Commission joined attorneys general from New York, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, North Carolina, and Virginia. Five of those AGs are Democrats and two are Republicans.
Officials allege Shkreli has publicly traded pharmaceutical stocks and broadcast his views on drug companies and biotech investing. The contempt filing seeks to enforce the lifetime ban imposed after a full trial.
Shkreli did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The ban traces to Shkreli’s tenure as CEO of the now-defunct company Vyera. In 2020, the FTC and New York Attorney General Letitia James charged him and others with anticompetitive conduct after Vyera raised the list price of Daraprim from $17.50 to $750 per tablet.
In 2022, after a full trial, New York Judge Denise Cote issued a 135-page ruling. The court found Shkreli’s conduct violated federal and state law and imposed a lifetime ban from any role in the drug industry.
FTC Bureau of Competition director Daniel Guarnera tied that history directly to the new filing.
"After a full trial, the court found that Martin Shkreli’s conduct drove up prescription drug costs for American patients and blocked the entry of lower-cost generics,"
Judge Cote described the lifetime ban as a serious remedy that had to be imposed with care. She wrote that Shkreli’s “egregious, deliberate, repetitive, long-running, and ultimately dangerous illegal conduct warrants imposition of an injunction of this scope.”
The ruling also detailed how Shkreli tightly controlled Daraprim distribution. That control, Cote found, kept generic drug companies from obtaining the quantity they needed for testing the Food and Drug Administration required.
"Through his tight control of the distribution of Daraprim, Shkreli prevented generic drug companies from getting access to the quantity of Daraprim they needed to conduct testing demanded by the Food and Drug Administration,"
The FTC says the violations started after Shkreli left prison in May 2022. Agency materials state he has publicly traded pharmaceutical industry stocks and aired opinions about the business and management of many drug companies.
In a July 2025 YouTube livestream, Shkreli spoke openly about his approach to biotech names.
"It doesn’t matter what trades I make because I can always find a couple of biotech stocks to smoke,"
The contempt motion claims he has been livestreaming and posting about trading and investing in biotech, running afoul of the permanent injunction. Guarnera framed the filing as a clear warning on court orders.
"When judgment is entered by a court, whether it’s a settlement or an order following a trial, defendants must fulfill their obligations. Today’s action should serve as notice that the FTC will not hesitate to enforce violations of court orders."
New York Attorney General Letitia James joined the motion and issued her own statement the same day.
James cast the ban as binding, not optional.
"A court-ordered lifetime ban isn’t a suggestion,"
She went further on the livestreams and the risk she says they pose.
"Martin Shkreli has been livestreaming his pharmaceutical company trades for the world to see, in violation of the law. Shkreli’s market manipulation and monopolistic tactics put investors and the public at risk, and we’re going back to court to put a stop to his latest illegal behavior."
James has faced sustained scrutiny over how she picks and runs major cases, including claims that internal pressure shaped prior probes.
The bipartisan lineup of state AGs matters here. Enforcement of a federal court injunction is not a left-right culture fight. It is a test of whether a permanent ban means what it says when the defendant is a high-profile financier with a record of securities fraud and drug-price gamesmanship.
Daraprim is a treatment for toxoplasmosis, a serious parasitic infection. When Vyera under Shkreli hiked the list price from $17.50 to $750 a tablet, the sticker shock landed on patients, hospitals, and payers. The 2022 ruling held that his distribution tactics also blocked cheaper generics from even completing the testing path the FDA required.
That is the conduct the lifetime ban was built to stop. The FTC press release on the contempt motion states that Shkreli, since May 2022, “has been violating the court order by publicly trading in pharmaceutical industry stocks and broadcasting his opinions about the business and management of many pharmaceutical industry companies.”
No ruling on the new motion has been issued. The filing asks the Southern District of New York to hold him in contempt. Specific sanctions beyond that finding are not detailed in the public statements released with the motion.
James’s office has also been pulled into other contested New York matters, from crime and bail fights with her GOP challenger to high-profile appointments handed down from Albany.
Mark Meador, posting from an FTC-linked account on October 13, 2026, amplified the agency’s action the same day the Daily Caller story landed. The core allegation remains straightforward: a man under a lifetime industry ban is accused of trading the sector’s stocks in public and talking about those trades on livestreams.
Shkreli’s path is familiar to anyone who followed the Daraprim episode and the later securities case. He left prison in May 2022. The permanent injunction was already in place. By July 2025 he was on a livestream joking that he could always find biotech stocks to trade. Regulators now say that pattern of public trading and commentary is exactly what the ban forbade.
Judge Cote’s 2022 language left little room for a soft reading. She called the conduct egregious, deliberate, repetitive, long-running, and dangerous. She imposed a lifetime bar from the drug industry because, in her view, nothing narrower would protect the public.
James has separately drawn bias challenges in other sensitive probes, including a push to remove her from a Cornell-related investigation, and has taken on cases after state leaders lost confidence in local prosecutors.
Whatever one thinks of the original price hike or the securities conviction, the present question is narrower. Did Shkreli obey a clear court order, or did he treat it as a suggestion he could talk and trade around on camera?
The FTC and seven states say he did not obey it. They have asked a federal judge to say the same thing in a contempt finding. Taxpayers and patients already absorbed the cost of the Daraprim strategy once. A lifetime ban that can be livestreamed away is not a ban.
Court orders bind famous defendants the same as everyone else, or they bind no one at all.
