'Pharma Bro' Shkreli sentenced to seven years for defrauding investors

[rooster59]

'Pharma Bro' Shkreli sentenced to seven years for defrauding investors

By Brendan Pierson

 

FILE PHOTO: Former drug company executive Martin Shkreli arrives at U.S. District Court for the third day of jury deliberations in his securities fraud trial in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., August 2, 2017. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky/File Photo

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Martin Shkreli, the former drug company executive who made headlines by jacking up the price of a lifesaving drug before he was found guilty of defrauding investors, was sentenced to 7 years and a $75,000 fine on Friday.

 

The sentence from U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, was shorter than the 15 years asked for by prosecutors but much longer than the 12 to 18 months Shkreli's lawyers had sought. Shkreli did not visibly react as the sentence was announced.

 

Shkreli's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, told reporters after the hearing that he was "disappointed" by the sentence.

 

"I thought the sentence should have been less than seven years," he said. "But Martin’s fine and will be fine and obviously it could have been a lot worse."

 

Before the sentencing, Brafman told Matsumoto that Shkreli, 34, suffered from depression and an anxiety disorder and was a “somewhat broken” person, whom the government wanted to “throw away.”

 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacquelyn Kasulis had said a 15-year sentence was justified in part because Shkreli’s crimes were not an “isolated lapse in judgment,” but a pattern of conduct including separate frauds for his two hedge funds and for his drug company Retrophin Inc.

 

Shkreli, born in Brooklyn to Albanian immigrant parents, became known as the "Pharma Bro" in September 2015 after founding Turing Pharmaceuticals, buying the anti-parasitic drug Daraprim and raising its price by 5,000 percent to $750 per pill. Shkreli was indicted for the unrelated securities fraud charges in December 2015.

 

At the hearing, Shkreli had choked up as he said he had learned from his mistakes.

 

“There is no conspiracy to take down Martin Shkreli. I took down Martin Shkreli with my disgraceful and shameful actions,” he said.

 

A jury in August found Shkreli guilty of defrauding investors in two hedge funds he ran, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare, by sending them fake account statements and concealing huge losses. He was also convicted of scheming to prop up the stock price of Retrophin, the drug company he founded in 2011.

 

The $75,000 fine comes on top of $7.36 million in forfeiture Shkreli had already been ordered to pay following his conviction.

Brafman, noting that he was old enough to be Shkreli’s father, said his client had not always been easy to work with.

 

“There are times when I want to hug him and hold him and comfort him and there are times when I want to punch him in the face,” Brafman said.

 

Kasulis said Brafman was trying to portray Shkreli as “a child.”

 

“Mr. Shkreli is about to turn 35 years old,” she said “He is a man who needs to take responsibility for his actions."

 

Matsumoto said before imposing her sentence that she believed Shkreli was genuinely remorseful and that the letters written by family, friends and acquaintances had helped her understand him more fully.

 

"Although he has been convicted of fraud, serious crimes, and he acted for pecuniary gain, he’s also a personally generous, giving and kind individual," she said.

 

Nonetheless, the judge said, the sentence must be severe enough to make clear "that fraud and manipulation are serious offenses that will incur correspondibly serious penalties."

 

Shkreli has been in jail since September, when Matsumoto revoked his bail after he offered his social media followers $5,000 if they could bring him a hair from former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

 

He has so far been held at the Brooklyn Detention Center, a maximum security facility. It is not yet clear where he will serve the rest of his time.

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-03-10

[Samui Bodoh]

I have little sympathy for this guy; when you are raising the price of required drugs so egregiously for no reason other than profit, you deserve your fate.

 

However, I truly wonder how much of all this is because of his smirk.

 

“There are times when I want to hug him and hold him and comfort him and there are times when I want to punch him in the face,” Brafman said.

 

I was watching a TV program a while back and there was a fascinating report on how much the smirk irked people. His photo was shown to numerous people without any explanation or context whatsoever as to his character or his actions. Almost universally he was condemned, called a liar and/or a crook and almost everyone thought he was an a******.

 

This guy was likely born with the worst, smarmiest smirk ever known to mankind...

 

[ezzra]

If in this world there's a person who deserves to go to prison for his greed and avidity profiting for people's misery, he's the one, and i hope the someone in the prison will try to teach him human compasions the hard way....  Having said that, i hope that Thailand one day will adopt similar punishment to similar situations on Thailand's homegrown army of swindlers, cheaters and scoundrels ......   

[boomerangutang]

It's like the 'it's great to eat pig and cow, but horrible to eat dog' syndrome.

 

People in general tolerate biz execs being very greedy and hoodwinking consumers in millions of ways, ....but this guy gets busted because he's involved with a pharma drug.

 

I'm not justifying what this guy did, ....but instead pointing out the extreme hypocritical spin.

 

Example: there are respected men who make millions of dollars/yr peddling sugar snacks to toddlers.  - using cartoon characters, cute animals, and bright colors to dazzle the toddlers, so they'll call out to their parents,  "mom dad, I want that candy!  I want lots of it all the time!"   It's no coincidence that 3/4 Americans are overweight.  

[Credo]

Hopefully others will follow, including the executives and Board of some of the major pharmaceutical companies.   

 

A close friend from Thailand is now living in the states.   He requires a medication that in Thailand costs around $150 per month from Thailand.   The  medication is made by the same company and sold by private hospitals at a profit.   In the US, the same medication is sold for well over $1,000 per month.   

 

It's not a generic drug and there is a cheaper one from India, but some doctors are skeptical whether the Indian drug is as effective.   

 

The profits are ridiculous.   But virtually nothing is said.

 

[Anak Nakal]

7 tears is too short!

[rudi49jr]

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy ....

[FritsSikkink]

6 hours ago, boomerangutang said:

It's like the 'it's great to eat pig and cow, but horrible to eat dog' syndrome.

 

People in general tolerate biz execs being very greedy and hoodwinking consumers in millions of ways, ....but this guy gets busted because he's involved with a pharma drug.

 

I'm not justifying what this guy did, ....but instead pointing out the extreme hypocritical spin.

 

Example: there are respected men who make millions of dollars/yr peddling sugar snacks to toddlers.  - using cartoon characters, cute animals, and bright colors to dazzle the toddlers, so they'll call out to their parents,  "mom dad, I want that candy!  I want lots of it all the time!"   It's no coincidence that 3/4 Americans are overweight.  

Getting fat because somebody offers something to you which you can refuse or getting denied to become healthy out of greed isn't really comparable. 

[Gulfsailor]

The guy should just pledge his loyalty to Trump via a tweet, and he will be pardoned by him. Birds of a feather and all that. 

[Andaman Al]

10 hours ago, Credo said:

Hopefully others will follow, including the executives and Board of some of the major pharmaceutical companies. 

Just as a reminder this scumbag has not been jailed for anything to do with ripping off people with drug prices. He was jailed for fraud in two of the hedge funds he was running. He deserves another 7 years for hiking up drug prices to the point where people died because they could not afford the drugs.

[Khun Han]

What he did with the price of Daraprim was disgusting, but not much different to what big pharma in general does: sell specialist patented drugs, that cost less than a Dollar a pill to make, for up to and over a thousand Dollars a pill. His big mistake was to deliberately create notoriety for himself: he was a publicity seeker of the worst kind. And thus he brought about his own fate, which he now acknowledges.

[Dumbastheycome]

7 hours ago, FritsSikkink said:

Getting fat because somebody offers something to you which you can refuse or getting denied to become healthy out of greed isn't really comparable. 

That  maybe  valid  if  it  were  not  for the  fact that  there  is  no warning  that it  involves  inherent  risk. In fact  it  is  more  common that the promotion of products  encourages  the  belief  it  is  harmless  at the  least or too often  of  degrees of  benefit. Fully  informed  choice is  not the  same as  deceit. If  fully  informed then  there is  the choice.

To play  on  the  gullible and uninformed may  be profitable  but is  never legitimate  despite  the  very  fact  that  that is  how  the  world  now  operates despite  the   pretended social protection  of  law. 

[ilostmypassword]

15 hours ago, boomerangutang said:

It's like the 'it's great to eat pig and cow, but horrible to eat dog' syndrome.

 

People in general tolerate biz execs being very greedy and hoodwinking consumers in millions of ways, ....but this guy gets busted because he's involved with a pharma drug.

 

I'm not justifying what this guy did, ....but instead pointing out the extreme hypocritical spin.

 

Example: there are respected men who make millions of dollars/yr peddling sugar snacks to toddlers.  - using cartoon characters, cute animals, and bright colors to dazzle the toddlers, so they'll call out to their parents,  "mom dad, I want that candy!  I want lots of it all the time!"   It's no coincidence that 3/4 Americans are overweight.  

Actually, he didn't get busted because he got involved with a "pharma drug". He got busted for a ponzi scheme in which he cheated investors. That may be bad, but morally speaking it's nothing compared to what he did to raising the price of that drug. That was perfectly legal.

[FritsSikkink]

2 hours ago, Dumbastheycome said:

That  maybe  valid  if  it  were  not  for the  fact that  there  is  no warning  that it  involves  inherent  risk. In fact  it  is  more  common that the promotion of products  encourages  the  belief  it  is  harmless  at the  least or too often  of  degrees of  benefit. Fully  informed  choice is  not the  same as  deceit. If  fully  informed then  there is  the choice.

To play  on  the  gullible and uninformed may  be profitable  but is  never legitimate  despite  the  very  fact  that  that is  how  the  world  now  operates despite  the   pretended social protection  of  law. 

So you are one of the guys who needs to be told : Don't put you cat in the microwave?

[Rhys]

Payback is a bear martyboy toy..

[boomerangutang]

10 hours ago, FritsSikkink said:

Getting fat because somebody offers something to you which you can refuse or getting denied to become healthy out of greed isn't really comparable. 

Do you remember the cigarette imbroglio from decades ago?  Cig companies had lots of money and were able to fight tooth and nail to keep their cash cows going for many years - even after the ill-effects of tobacco were well-known.

It's not a whole lot different than, for example, sugary products (sugar has been shown to be addictive).  It's easy to hook kids on sugary crap.  Lots of respected-by-society businesspeople make a lot of money from getting kids hooked on sugar, and maintaining that addiction for as long as possible.  More often than not, those people become seriously overweight, which leads to all sorts of health problems, and costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of $$'s.  Police and military recruitment, in the US, is having trouble finding enough folks who aren't overweight and otherwise sickly.

[FritsSikkink]

28 minutes ago, boomerangutang said:

Do you remember the cigarette imbroglio from decades ago?  Cig companies had lots of money and were able to fight tooth and nail to keep their cash cows going for many years - even after the ill-effects of tobacco were well-known.

It's not a whole lot different than, for example, sugary products (sugar has been shown to be addictive).  It's easy to hook kids on sugary crap.  Lots of respected-by-society businesspeople make a lot of money from getting kids hooked on sugar, and maintaining that addiction for as long as possible.  More often than not, those people become seriously overweight, which leads to all sorts of health problems, and costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of $$'s.  Police and military recruitment, in the US, is having trouble finding enough folks who aren't overweight and otherwise sickly.

So as a parent you should know better and take care of your kids. Explain to them they can't get it as it is no good. Don't blame others but take responsibility. 

[bendejo]

All in all, his crime was his attitude and manner.  And of course the facial expressions.  That whole "ha-ha, I'm holding the winning hand and you can't touch me, you loser" thing.  But what got him into the jumpsuit was the stupid Hillary's hair thing.  If not for all this, he probably would have a leaner sentence and a recommendation for Club Fed. 

 

Some of you might recall Bill Clinton had a highly annoying smirk, it took Ken Starr to wipe that off his face.

 

 

[Dumbastheycome]

On 11/03/2018 at 12:08 AM, FritsSikkink said:

So you are one of the guys who needs to be told : Don't put you cat in the microwave?

Caveat emptor is  an obvious. But ineffective in the  face of deception.

Are you one of those guys who advocate scamming as  being clever  business?

 

[FritsSikkink]

31 minutes ago, Dumbastheycome said:

Caveat emptor is  an obvious. But ineffective in the  face of deception.

Are you one of those guys who advocate scamming as  being clever  business?

 

No, but I don't have much sympathy for people who make very stupid decisions and blame others for it. 

[Just Weird]

On ‎3‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 6:57 AM, boomerangutang said:

It's like the 'it's great to eat pig and cow, but horrible to eat dog' syndrome.

 

People in general tolerate biz execs being very greedy and hoodwinking consumers in millions of ways, ....but this guy gets busted because he's involved with a pharma drug.

 

I'm not justifying what this guy did, ....but instead pointing out the extreme hypocritical spin.

 

This case is nothing to do with pharmaceuticals, the offences he's been jailed and fined for were hedge fund frauds and a stock market offence.