Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli was hit with a class action lawsuit Thursday by health insurers who say it has committed to a plan to create a pharmaceutical monopoly that has raised the price of an HIV drug by more than 4,000 percent.
In federal lawsuits in Manhattan, Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Minnesota, he said Shkreli – and his company Vyera Pharmaceuticals – created a monopoly on Daraprin in 2015, among other tactics, preventing “competitors from obtaining the Daraprim evidence they had. need to launch a generic product. ”
Shkreli and his company then covered the scheme, according to the lawsuit, publicly denying the effort to prevent competitors from taking samples.
Without competition, Shkreli has raised the price of the drug – which is used to treat toxoplasmosis and also given to HIV patients with compromised immune systems – from $ 17.50 to $ 750 in 2015.
“The defendants established that they could impose monopoly prices and obtain significant profits to the detriment of the plaintiff and class members, who were forced to pay inflated prices in violation of federal antitrust laws,” the lawsuit said.
Companies are seeking unspecified damages to be determined in a jury trial.
Shkreli attracted headlines after inflating the price of life-saving drugs in 2015 – and was convicted of securities fraud in an unrelated case resulting from two hedge funds he administered.
He is currently serving a seven-year sentence after his 2017 sentence.
Shkreli returned to headlines in 2020 after a former Bloomberg News reporter admitted to falling in love with Pharma Bro while covering his trial in Brooklyn federal court.
Christie Smythe, 38, told Elle magazine that she “fell into the rabbit hole” in her relationship with Shkreli – and ended up breaking up with her husband and moving out of their Brooklyn apartment.