Martin Shkreli's ongoing jail term isn't the end of his legal troubles, and a federal judge rejected his latest effort to bring them to a close, allowing a lawsuit against him filed by New York's attorney general to proceed.
The lawsuit accuses Shkreli, a former pharmaceutical executive, of illegally "trying to monopolize the lifesaving drug Daraprim, whose price he raised more than 4,000% in one day."
The defendants were accused of scheming to block generic equivalents of Daraprim from entering the market, enabling them in 2015 to boost the drug's cost overnight to $750 from $17.50. Daraprim treats a potentially fatal infection known as toxoplasmosis. Nicknamed "Pharma Bro" for eccentricities including his use of social media, Shkreli is serving a seven-year prison term following his 2017 conviction for cheating investors in two hedge funds and trying to prop up a biotechnology company's stock price.
One of the peculiarities of Shkreli's case is that he became famous (and widely loathed) for his price-hiking of key medications, but went to jail on unrelated fraud charges. He hasn't stopped grifting inside, either.
