Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli was sued on Thursday by a class action lawsuit by health insurers claiming he has a plan to create a pharmaceutical monopoly that would allow him to increase the price of an HIV drug by more than 4,000 percent.
In the federal court case in Manhattan, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, Shkreli – and his company Vyera Pharmaceuticals – created the monopoly on the drug Daraprin in 2015 by, among other things, tactics to prevent “competitors from getting the Daraprim samples they need,” could obtain a generic product. ”
Shkreli and his company, according to the lawsuit, covered up the scheme by publicly denying the attempt to take competitors from samples.
With no competition, Shkreli has increased the price of the drug – which is used to treat toxoplasmosis and also given to HIV patients with a compromised immune system – from $ 17.50 to $ 750 in 2015.
“Defendants established that they could impose monopoly prices and reap substantial profits at the expense of plaintiff and class members, who were forced to pay inflated prices in violation of federal antitrust laws,” the lawsuit reads.
The companies are asking for unspecified damages to be determined during a jury trial.
Shkreli made headlines after inflating the price of the life-saving drug in 2015 – and was convicted of security fraud in an unrelated case as a result of two hedge funds he managed.
He is currently serving a seven-year sentence following his 2017 conviction.
Shkreli returned to the riots in 2020 after a former Bloomberg News reporter admitted that she fell in love with the Pharma Bro while he was handling his trial in federal court in Brooklyn.
Christie Smythe, 38, told Elle Magazine that she ‘fell off the rabbit hole’ in her relationship with Shkreli and eventually split from her husband and moved out of their Brooklyn apartment.