Martin Shkreli can’t escape his $64 million fine

The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Monday not to take up Martin Shkreli’s appeal of a $64.6 million penalty he received after raising the price of a lifesaving drug by more than 4,000% during his time as a pharma CEO.

The justices declined to hear Shkreli’s appeal of a lower court ruling that upheld the $64.6 million penalty, which matched the profits he and one of his former companies earned by raising the price of the drug Daraprim in 2015. This was Shkreli’s last opportunity to appeal the multimillion-dollar fine.

The Supreme Court denied the request without providing an explanation, and no justices publicly dissented from the decision, CNBC reports.

Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals — which later became Vyera Pharmaceuticals — when the company acquired exclusive rights to Daraprim, a drug used to treat a parasitic disease called toxoplasmosis that can have serious health effects on pregnant women, infants, cancer patients, and people with AIDS.

In 2015, he raised the price of the drug from $13.50 to $750 per pill, earning him the nickname “Pharma Bro” as he became infamous for the steep price hike.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with the states of New York, California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, filed a civil lawsuit against Shkreli and Vyera Pharmaceutical in 2020 for allegedly blocking competition to Daraprim and costing patients millions of dollars every year.

At the time, Shkreli was already serving a prison sentence for a separate case involving investor fraud. He was released in 2022.

In January 2022, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan ruled in favor of the FTC, permanently banning Shkreli from the pharmaceutical industry and ordering him to repay the profits he made from drastically raising the price of Daraprim.

“Judge Cote’s decision to ban Shkreli for life from the pharmaceutical industry is a significant victory for American consumers,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan at the time. “This precedent-setting relief should be a warning to corporate executives everywhere that they may be held individually responsible for the anticompetitive conduct they direct or control.”

Earlier this year, a three-judge panel from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld that decision.