Martin Shkreli’s shady business practices have finally caught up with him.
Martin Shkreli, the “Pharma Bro” who became public enemy #1 for hiking the price of Daraprim up by 5,000 percent after
acquiring it through his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, has been
arrested for securities fraud as a result of activities with Retrophin,
the drug company he formerly founded and was unceremoniously ousted
from.
Shkreli is charged with using Retrophin as, essentially, his own private checking account by illegally siphoning off stocks and assets from the company to pay off personal debts from his other business dealings.
Shkreli was arrested Thursday morning at his home in Manhattan. Evan Greebel, a New York lawyer, was also arrested this morning for conspiring with Shkreli to defraud his old companies.
Shkreli found himself in desperate need of cash after another company he founded, a hedge fund called MSMB Capital Management, was nearly bankrupted after a disastrous deal with Merrill Lynch.
Retrophin’s lawyers claim that their former founder paid off as many as ten investors through illegal payment plans that liquidated Retrophin’s stocks to pay them after the collapse of MSMB Capital Management. Complicated financial maneuvers were used to hide the payoffs, moves which authorities refer to as a “shell game.”
The SEC is expected to open a civil complaint against him parallel to the private suit from Retrophin.
Shkreli has not been arrested for anything related to his price gouging or actions surrounding Daraprim, as all those actions were perfectly legal. However, shortly after the massive and unanimous public outcry, the Senate Special Committee on Aging launched an investigation into the very practices he exploited for massive profit at others’ expense.
But as if his repeated price gouging was not enough to make him the most hated man in America, Shkreli has displayed an almost perverse desire to be hated, actively wading into situations and comments that make him a target of revilement.
He did not just raise the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750. He also failed to follow through on a promise to lower it back down to former prices, publicly taunted his critics on Twitter, and even bought a $2 million, one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album seemingly just out of spite and to keep himself at the center of attention, causing many in the public to wonder if he might just be a full-blown sociopath. He also made a very public and large donation to Bernie Sanders, which Sanders decided to pass on to a Washington health clinic rather than accept.
Shkreli was also accused in the past by Tim Pierotti, a former business rival, of a months-long campaign of harassment and intimidation that extended to Shkreli directly contacting Pierotti’s wife and children.
The CEO of Biogen Inc., George Scangos, summed up his rival’s current company and price-gouging perfectly by saying, “Turing is to a research-based company like a loan shark is to a legitimate bank.”
http://usuncut.com/news/martin-shkreli-arrested-for-fraud/
Shkreli is charged with using Retrophin as, essentially, his own private checking account by illegally siphoning off stocks and assets from the company to pay off personal debts from his other business dealings.
Shkreli was arrested Thursday morning at his home in Manhattan. Evan Greebel, a New York lawyer, was also arrested this morning for conspiring with Shkreli to defraud his old companies.
Shkreli found himself in desperate need of cash after another company he founded, a hedge fund called MSMB Capital Management, was nearly bankrupted after a disastrous deal with Merrill Lynch.
Retrophin’s lawyers claim that their former founder paid off as many as ten investors through illegal payment plans that liquidated Retrophin’s stocks to pay them after the collapse of MSMB Capital Management. Complicated financial maneuvers were used to hide the payoffs, moves which authorities refer to as a “shell game.”
Shkreli has not been arrested for anything related to his price gouging or actions surrounding Daraprim, as all those actions were perfectly legal. However, shortly after the massive and unanimous public outcry, the Senate Special Committee on Aging launched an investigation into the very practices he exploited for massive profit at others’ expense.
But as if his repeated price gouging was not enough to make him the most hated man in America, Shkreli has displayed an almost perverse desire to be hated, actively wading into situations and comments that make him a target of revilement.
He did not just raise the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750. He also failed to follow through on a promise to lower it back down to former prices, publicly taunted his critics on Twitter, and even bought a $2 million, one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album seemingly just out of spite and to keep himself at the center of attention, causing many in the public to wonder if he might just be a full-blown sociopath. He also made a very public and large donation to Bernie Sanders, which Sanders decided to pass on to a Washington health clinic rather than accept.
Shkreli was also accused in the past by Tim Pierotti, a former business rival, of a months-long campaign of harassment and intimidation that extended to Shkreli directly contacting Pierotti’s wife and children.
The CEO of Biogen Inc., George Scangos, summed up his rival’s current company and price-gouging perfectly by saying, “Turing is to a research-based company like a loan shark is to a legitimate bank.”
http://usuncut.com/news/martin-shkreli-arrested-for-fraud/
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