Martin Shkreli

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‘Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli convicted on 3 counts of fraud

Shkreli faces up to 20 years in prison.

 

Andrew Couts

IRL

Posted on Aug 4, 2017   Updated on May 22, 2021, 9:37 pm CDT

Martin Shkreli, the infamous “Pharma Bro,” has been found guilty of fraud.

After five days of deliberations, a federal jury in New York on Friday found Shkreli guilty on three of eight charges, two counts of securities fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

The conviction follows a five-week trial during which Shkreli boasted that he was “so innocent” and would receive an apology from prosecutors after the jury exonerated him.

Shkreli faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The charges are related to Shkreli’s operation of a pair of hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare. After MSMB Capital collapsed in early 2011, Shkreli continued to send out statements to investors, pretending the fund was still making money despite the fact that it was entirely broke.

Shkreli then started a firm, Retrophin, which he used to pay back his MSMB investors.

In addition to Retrophin, Shkreli also led Turing Pharmaceutical. It was through Turing that Shkreli found his claim to infamy: Overnight, the company boosted the price of the drug Daraprim—which provides people with AIDS a lifesaving treatment for an infection called toxoplasmosis—from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Shkreli in December 2015.

Shkreli embraced his villainous caricature. After the Daraprim debacle, he purchased the only copy of Wu-Tang’s million-dollar album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin; gleefully harassed a Teen Vogue writer until he was kicked off Twitter; and played a track from Lil Wayne‘s unreleased 2014 album Tha Carter V.

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*First Published: Aug 4, 2017, 3:35 pm CDT