As Hurricane Milton approached landfall in western Florida on Wednesday, the Biden administration warned consumers and businesses of the heightened risk of potential fraud, price gouging and collusion that accompanies major natural disasters.

“We’re hearing troubling reports of price gouging for essentials that are necessary for people to get out of harm’s way — from hotels to groceries to gas,” Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said in a statement Wednesday.

By noon ET on Wednesday, nearly a quarter of gas stations in Florida were out of gas, according to Patrick De Haan, an oil and gas analyst who tracks pump supply.

“Companies are on notice: do not use the hurricane as an excuse to exploit people through illegal behavior,” said Manish Kumar, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.

Most states have laws intended to curb price gouging, with many of these restrictions tied to declared states of emergency.

“Wrongdoers are looking to exploit opportunities and victims of natural disasters for their own personal gain,” Ronald C. Gathe Jr., U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Louisiana, said in a statement.

Several major airlines and retailers have told CNBC in recent days that they froze prices in advance of the storm.

“Once we have any emergency situation, all of our prices are freeze,” Kelly Mayhall, president of Home Depot’s Southern division, told CNBC on Wednesday.

Amid a historic hurricane season, the Biden administration cited a number of issues for consumers to be on the lookout for, including fraudulent charities that claim to be soliciting donations for disaster victims, scammers trying to get personal information or money, and exorbitant pricing for necessities.

“Any company or individual that tries to exploit Americans in an emergency should know that the Administration is monitoring for allegations of fraud and price gouging and will hold those taking advantage of the situation accountable,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement on Wednesday.

Hurricane Milton was moving through the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 4 storm early Wednesday afternoon, and was expected to hit the western Florida Gulf Coast sometime between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. ET, according to NBC News meteorologists.

The National Hurricane Center warned that evacuations and other precautions should have been completed by early Wednesday.

In September, Hurricane Helene caused widespread devastation across the South, killing more than 230 people. North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein has also warned of price gouging in his state.

CVS Health and UnitedHealth Group are demanding Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and two other commissioners recuse themselves from a lawsuit accusing the companies and other drug middlemen of boosting their profits while inflating insulin costs for Americans. 

In separate motions filed Tuesday night with the FTC, CVS and UnitedHealth argued that all three commissioners have an extensive track record of making public statements that indicate “serious bias” against the companies’ so-called pharmacy benefit managers. 

The companies accused Khan, as well as Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, of incorrectly asserting that PBMs are “price gougers” that hold significant control over the pricing and access to drugs like insulin. CVS said those statements demonstrate that the commissioners have “prejudged this matter,” so their participation in the case “violates due process.” 

“If the opposite of ‘complete fairness’ is ‘blatant bias,’ the Three Commissioners would easily satisfy even that standard,” CVS wrote in a 23-page motion.

Meanwhile, UnitedHealth’s 17-page motion said, “Any judge who made these remarks about a litigant at the outset of a lawsuit would immediately need to recuse for blatant bias.”

The FTC on Wednesday did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the motion. 

Other corporate giants, including Amazon and Meta, have unsuccessfully pushed for Khan to be disqualified from previous cases or investigations, citing concerns about her objectivity. Khan has resisted those calls, saying she has never prejudged any case or set of facts. 

The FTC filed the suit last month against the three largest PBMs, CVS Health’s Caremark, UnitedHealth Group‘s Optum Rx and Cigna‘s Express Scripts. All are owned by or connected to health insurers and collectively administer about 80% of the nation’s prescriptions, according to the FTC. 

PBMs sit at the center of the drug supply chain in the U.S., negotiating medication rebates with manufacturers on behalf of insurers, creating lists of preferred medications covered by health plans and reimbursing pharmacies for prescriptions. The FTC has been investigating PBMs and their role in insulin prices since 2022.

The agency’s lawsuit argues that the three PBMs have created a “perverse” system that prioritizes high rebates from manufacturers, which leads to “artificially inflated insulin list prices.” The suit also alleges that PBMs favor high-list-price insulins even when insulins with lower list prices become available. 

The lawsuit also includes each PBM’s affiliated group purchasing organization, or GPO, which brokers drug purchases for hospitals and other health-care providers. Zinc Health Services operates as the GPO for Caremark, while Emisar Pharma acts as the GPO for OptumRx. Ascent Health Services is the GPO for Cigna.

The lawsuit is just one of several headwinds CVS is facing. Shares of the company are down more than 20% this year as it grapples with runaway medical costs in its insurance segment and pharmacy reimbursement pressure. 

CVS has engaged advisors in a strategic review of its business, which could potentially involve splitting the company’s insurer from its retail pharmacies. It’s unclear where Caremark would fall in the case of a breakup. 

In the motion Tuesday, CVS alleged that Khan has vilified PBMs during her entire professional career. For example, the company cited a 2022 statement in which Khan said PBMs “practically determine which medicines are prescribed, which pharmacies patients can use, and the amount patients will pay at the pharmacy counter.”

CVS similarly pointed to Slaughter’s previous comments about the allegedly “disturbing,” “unacceptable” and “rotten” rebating practices of PBMs, and how she believes they create “competitive distortions in pharmaceutical markets.” Meanwhile, the company cited Bedoya’s suggestions that “a significant part of the blame” for insulin price increases rests on rebates demanded by PBMs. 

CVS called the prior statements of the three commissioners “incorrect assertions” about Caremark and other PBMs. 

The health-care giant also alleged that during the FTC probe, the three commissioners attended closed events to help fundraise for anti-PBM lobbying groups. Organizers of those events vilified PBMs as “bloodsuckers” and “vampires,” CVS argued in the motion.

The Biden administration and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have escalated pressure on PBMs, seeking to increase transparency into their business practices as many patients struggle to afford prescription drugs. Americans pay two to three times more than patients in other developed nations for prescription drugs on average, according to a fact sheet from the White House.