US justice catches up with Martin Shkreli to charge entrepreneur with fraud

[webfact]

US justice catches up with Martin Shkreli to charge entrepreneur with fraud
By Robert Hackwill

NEW YORK: -- It appears karma may have caught up with US entrepreneur Martin Shkreli, who has been arrested on fraud charges. In 2015 he became the internet’s most hated person when he bought a 62-year old drug with anti-HIV applications, long available as a generic, and bumped up the price by more than 5000%.

The public outcry didn’t lead to a fall in price, and deepened federal investigations into pharmaceutical pricing across the industry.

Shkreli was again recently in the headlines for buying the only copy of the latest Wu Tang Clan album, “Once upon a time in Shaolin”, for a reported two million dollars. Now in custody, he will have to trust his domestic alarm system. The sales contract stipulates Shkreli has to allow the Wu Tang Clan one attempt to steal it back; either them or the actor Bill Murray.

The Wu Tang Clan have already reportedly donated at least some of the proceeds to charity.

-- (c) Copyright Euronews 2015-12-18

[webfact]

Exec who jacked up price of a lifesaving drug is arrested
By TOM HAYS

NEW YORK (AP) — A boyish-looking entrepreneur who became the new face of corporate greed when he jacked up the price of a lifesaving drug fiftyfold was led away in handcuffs by the FBI on unrelated fraud charges Thursday in a scene that left more than a few Americans positively gleeful.

Martin Shkreli, a 32-year-old former hedge fund manager and relentless self-promoter who has called himself "the world's most eligible bachelor" on Twitter, was arrested in a gray hoodie and taken into federal court in Brooklyn, where he pleaded not guilty. He was released on $5 million bail.

If convicted, he could get up to 20 years in prison. He left court without speaking to reporters. His attorneys had no immediate comment.

Online, many people took delight in his arrest, calling him a greedy, arrogant "punk" who gave capitalism a bad name and got what was coming to him. Some cracked jokes about lawyers jacking up their hourly fees 5,000 percent to defend him in his hour of need.


Prosecutors said that between 2009 and 2014, Shkreli lost some of his hedge fund investors' money through bad trades, then looted Retrophin, a pharmaceutical company where he was CEO, for $11 million to pay back his disgruntled clients.

Shkreli "engaged in multiple schemes to ensnare investors through a web of lies and deceit," U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said in a statement.

Shkreli was charged with securities fraud and conspiracy. A second defendant, lawyer Evan Greebel, of Scarsdale, New York, was charged with conspiracy and also pleaded not guilty.

In September, Shkreli was widely vilified after a drug company he founded, Turing Pharmaceuticals, spent $55 million for the U.S. rights to sell a medicine called Daraprim and promptly raised the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

The 62-year-old drug is the only approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease that mainly strikes pregnant women, cancer patients and AIDS patients.

The move sparked outrage on the presidential campaign trail and helped prompt a Capitol Hill hearing on drug prices. Headlines called the Brooklyn-born Shkreli such thing as "America's most hated man," the "drug industry's villain" and "biotech's bad boy" — and those were just some of the more printable names.

Hillary Clinton called it price-gouging and said the company's behavior was "outrageous." Donald Trump called Shkreli "a spoiled brat." Bernie Sanders returned a donation from Shkreli.

Prosecutors said the investigation that led to Shkreli's arrest dated back to last year, before the furor over the drug-price increase.

Shkreli defended the increase by saying that insurance and other programs would enable patients to get the drug and that the profits would help fund research into new treatments.

But he also made an unapologetic business-is-business argument for the price jump. In fact, he recently said he probably should have raised it more.

"No one wants to say it, no one's proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system and capitalist rules," he said in an interview at the Forbes Healthcare Summit this month. "And my investors expect me to maximize profits, not to minimize them or go half or go 70 percent but to go to 100 percent of the profit curve."

Amid the uproar, Shkreli said Turing would cut the price of Daraprim. Last month, however, Turing reneged. Instead, the company is reducing what it charges hospitals for Daraprim by as much as 50 percent.

While most patients' copayments will be $10 or less a month, insurance companies will be stuck with the bulk of the tab, potentially driving up future treatment and insurance costs.

On Thursday, Robert Weissman, president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said Shkreli got "a deserved comeuppance."

"Al Capone was brought down for tax evasion, but he committed many worse crimes," Weissman said. "So if Shkreli's arrested for securities violations, it's a comparable justice."

Shkreli is known as a prolific user of Twitter and often livestreams his work day over the Internet, inviting people to chat with him at his desk. He refers to those who follow him online as his "fans."

Recently it emerged that he bought the only copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album titled "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," which the hip-hop group sold on the condition that it not be released publicly. He said he paid $2 million.

Capers, the chief federal prosecutor, sidestepped a question about whether authorities had seized Shkreli's album, and said: "We're not aware of how he raised the funds to buy the Wu-Tang album."

Last month, Shkreli was named chairman and CEO of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals after buying a majority stake in the struggling cancer drug developer. After his arrest, its stock fell by more than half Thursday before trading in the company was suspended.
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Associated Press writers Larry Neumeister and Jennifer Peltz in New York and Linda A. Johnson in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed to this report.


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-12-18

[WorriedNoodle]

Ain't kharma a bitch, from CEO to arrested hoodie. LOL.

[scorecard]

Capitalism gone mad, all contributing to the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer in every country in the world.

- Bring on price controls for many products and services.

- Implement stronger laws to stop the creation of all monopolies

- Break up existing monopolies.

- Implement much harsher penalties for human rights violations. Confiscate all their assets, let them rot in jail forever with hard labor.

- Create and enforce laws to stop gross levels of salaries and bonuses, especially in banking.

- Create laws which reduce / control the gap in salaries.

- Create more laws and regulations which help to reduce the gap, e.g. cheaper fares for the poor, much higher financial support for all levels of education to spread opportunity for education and for better employment opportunities.

- Support healthcare, following the successful examples already in place in the world, to ensure all citizens have access to quality healthcare.

Edited December 18, 2015 by scorecard

[NCC1701A]

no doubt he will be in Thailand soon...

[bendejo]

He bought up another pharma company that was less than a dollar a share, then it shot up to $40. Of course he's up to something there, trading was suspended, now he's over-extended and will fall on his face (hopefully where the horse was standing).

He's the new Bernie Madoff, so when people talk mess about Goldman Sachs they can then turn it around and point to sonnyboy here. What a maroon!

Edited December 18, 2015 by bendejo

[fekman]

"Hillary Clinton called it price gouging".....as she charges 335k usd for a one hour speech at a SCHOOL! Face palm.

[GeorgesAbitbol]

I like Karma with my coffee...this is such a good news.

I hope the Wu tang Clan and Bill Murray will seize the opportunity to do their Heist and grab back this album

This guy was so full of sh.t on his twitter account

[pitrevie]

"Hillary Clinton called it price gouging".....as she charges 335k usd for a one hour speech at a SCHOOL! Face palm.

Yes that is terrible, GWB charged a Veteran's charity $100,000 to speak at their event plus $20,000 for a private plane to take him there.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/09/george-w-bush-veteran-speaking-fee_n_7763008.html

However I don't think doing that is classed as fraud, greed maybe but not fraud.