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The Courts

'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli Found Guilty of 3 of 8 Charges, Including Securities Fraud (cnbc.com) 146

Posted by msmash from the catching-up dept.
Former pharmaceutical chief executive Martin Shkreli has been found guilty of securities fraud. A New York City jury returned the verdict after five days of deliberations. From a report: Shkreli, 34, was convicted of some of the eight criminal counts that he had faced, which had included securities fraud and conspiracy to commit both securities fraud and wire fraud, after a more-than-month-long trial in Brooklyn, New York, federal court. Of the eight counts, Shkreli was found guilty of three. Those included conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and two counts of securities fraud. He was found not guilty of five counts, including those related to wire fraud. He faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced.
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'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli Found Guilty of 3 of 8 Charges, Including Securities Fraud More

'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli Found Guilty of 3 of 8 Charges, Including Securities Fraud

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  • Hey Martin!! (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Don't drop the soap BRO!!

  • Bro, say it ain't so! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @03:20PM (#54942417) Homepage Journal

    and...

    Bro, do u even lift (in prison)

  • How sad (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 04, 2017 @03:20PM (#54942421)

    Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

  • Woot. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    People should not go to prison just because they're assholes. Luckily, he wasn't just an asshole - he did some illegal stuff as well!

    • Re: Woot. (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That is my view.

      My opinion on his previous actions was "Eh, he is gonna get rich and maybe it will incentivize a competitor to produce an alternate treatment method, therefore creating an overall benefit, since more possible treatment options is good."

      Absolutely horrified my friends.

      But if he's doing security fraud? Eh, fuck him.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sims 2 ( 994794 )

        IIRC the deal wasn't that no one else made the drug it was that they had managed to secure exclusive rights to sell it in the united states.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by murdocj ( 543661 )

        that's dumb. There already was a treatment that was easily affordable. Developing a new treatment could take a decade or more. How many people die in the meantime?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      I'm afraid this is one of those we don't have a law related to this guy doing things that are legal but morally wrong so we're going to pick through everything until we can find something to nail him with.

      Does anyone know if the investigation was started before or after he jacked prices from $13.50 to $750 and got tons of media and legal attention as a result?

      Yes he's an asshole but it doesn't make it any less of a dangerous road to be going down.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The investigation started in Jan 2015 before he started Turing Pharma which is where he hiked the price of Daraprim. However he did hike the price of a drug called Thiola in 2014 at his first pharma company.

      • Re:Woot. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:07PM (#54942823)

        I'm afraid this is one of those we don't have a law related to this guy doing things that are legal but morally wrong so we're going to pick through everything until we can find something to nail him with.

        So what? He committed the crimes he was convicted of, none of which are minor crimes. The prosecutors used the tools available to them to take a piece of shit who doesn't belong in a civilized society and put him in a place where he will perhaps learn some humility. Oh who am I kidding, I hope he bunks with an HIV+ weight lifter that likes cute "bros".

        • Re:Woot. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AdaStarks ( 2634757 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:57PM (#54943215)

          I hate Shkreli as much as the next internet person, but let's not wish rape on the guy. "Cruel and unusual punishment" is explicitly rejected by our justice system, the integrity of which is already shaky enough. For everyone like this guy that's "earned it", there's another in that same situation who was wrongfully convicted, and is now being doubly punished.

          • I hate Shkreli as much as the next internet person, but let's not wish rape on the guy.

            Why not? His actions with respect to how he has marketed the pharmaceuticals he controls have caused much pain and suffering for many many people. His punishment must punative.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward

              Are you really so dense as to be unable to differentiate the difference between sentencing by a judge as prescribed by law, and a "sentence" decided by some random shithead violent psychopath?

            • Re:Woot. (Score:5, Informative)

              by JohnFen ( 1641097 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @07:54PM (#54944321)

              Because the goal of the justice system is supposed to be justice, not vengeance.

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by Anonymous Coward

                In Murica, it's actually all about VENGEANCE. Here, that IS justice.

                • More Americans should read the Bible:

                  If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

                  Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

                  --Romans 12:19

                  • Re: Woot. (Score:1)

                    by Anonymous Coward

                    Which we should understand in the context of it really just being Paul trying to get Rome to stop murdering political revolutionaries in the Levant.

                    I get what you're saying about the hypocrisy of Christian ideals only applied when convenient, however.

              • Because the goal of the justice system is supposed to be justice, not vengeance.

                Yeah, but it could be argued that the US justice system is more of vengeance system.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Agripa ( 139780 )

                Because the goal of the justice system is supposed to be justice, not vengeance.

                Then you have already fallen for it. We have courts of "law" and not courts of "justice". The Department of Justice and Justice System are misnamed.

          • I don't wish rape or other abuse on anyone, even a scumbag like this.

            But considering the (metaphorical, but not less harmful) raping that he engaged in, the phrase "live by the sword, die by the sword" did pop into my mind.

          • For everyone like this guy that's "earned it", there's another in that same situation who was wrongfully convicted, and is now being doubly punished.

            I'd like to think that the number of wrongfully convicted people in prison is very small.

            If half our prison population were wrongfully convicted, then there's something seriously wrong.

            And before you reply that it's true, I hope you've got a citation for it to go along with it. And not a citation from Breitbart.

            • What's that old quote about "I'd rather a hundred guilty men go free than 1 innocent man be imprisoned"?

              Hoping that Shkreli gets raped really means hoping that he ends up in a penitentiary where violent and aggressive inmates aren't dealt with and guards let their personal feelings get in the way of their professional duties. And if such a penitentiary exists, who's to say that some of those 1 in a 100 innocents don't go there? I'm not saying that's the actual number or anything, and duh those places exist,

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by sims 2 ( 994794 )

          The concern is that they can do this to anyone for any reason.
          Suing the state over non functioning stoplights? That's going to piss a bunch of people off who will then start looking through what records they have until they find something anything that they can make stick.

          "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -Cardinal Richelieu

          That's the deal you can find something wrong with anyone if you look hard enough stuff they pro

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

        Yes he's an asshole but it doesn't make it any less of a dangerous road to be going down.

        How is convicting someone of a crime he committed a dangerous road?
        How does the date someone started investigating him for securities fraud make a difference?

        On the flip side, if someone just makes a silly amount of money after jacking up the prices of one of their product, what makes you think they won't get looked at to see if there isn't securities fraud going on?

        This seems like perfectly reasonable effect of a functioning society at work.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by sims 2 ( 994794 )

          Only if it was only done because they think he is an asshole.
          That guy is an asshole is not just cause to go through all their activities for the last 20 years. Reports of actual fraud would be.

          Jacking up the prices of a vital drug for no reason other than $$$$s is likely to have made a lot of enemies. So I was curious if this was just done to get back at him over that.

          I'm not really sure how hiking drug prices and securities fraud are related but that's probably because I don't know anything about securitie

          • So I was curious if this was just done to get back at him over that.

            Not at all. Whenever someone within a company makes a lot of money off a sudden change in price there's investigations. Whether he's a dick or not (he is), or whether this was live saving medication or not is quite irrelevant.

            Hell when the original story broke there were a lot of people pointing out that his purchase and sudden price change would draw scrutiny from the regulators. That's what they do.

    • Re:Woot. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:15PM (#54942893)

      People should not go to prison just because they're assholes.

      But that would be a better world than one in which the prisons are filled with people who smoked some weed or took one of Grandpa's pain pills.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by murdocj ( 543661 )

      I disagree. Being an asshole should be enough to get you jailed. Life would be better for the rest of us.

  • Should have been all 8 charges (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rahvin112 ( 446269 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @03:29PM (#54942517)

    The guy ran a ponzi scheme, at points when he was claiming $100million in fund assets when he only had $1000 in the funds account. In the end he stole money from his new company's investors to pay off the fund investors he'd cheated so they wouldn't go to the cops.

    I bet the jury didn't convict him on the charges because his investors were made whole by the second theft. But when you commit a crime like he did it doesn't matter if you eventually make them whole, you commit the crime when you lie and commit fraud. I don't know if the court didn't explain this well enough to the jury or what, but the man defrauded hundreds of people, then stole money from Retrophin to pay back the investors from his failed hedge fund. He's no better than Madoff and he should go to jail for YEARS and be bared from any type of job in involving managing money including a cashier at the local grocery store.

    He's a dumpster fire of a human being and he broke the law and should do the time. I hope he spends a whole lot of time in a 8x10 cell all by himself.

    • I completely disagree. He should not spend a whole lot of time in an 8 x 10 cell by himself.

      Shkreli should spend a whole lot of time in an 8 x 10 cell with a 300-pound oversexed lifer who's hung like a donkey.

      • Re:Should have been all 8 charges (Score:5, Insightful)

        by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:22PM (#54942949)

        I completely disagree. He should not spend a whole lot of time in an 8 x 10 cell by himself.

        Shkreli should spend a whole lot of time in an 8 x 10 cell with a 300-pound oversexed lifer who's hung like a donkey.

        While Shkreli no doubt deserves a ton of punishment relying on prison inmates to mete out justice really speaks to the inadequacy of our "justice" system. Criminals are far more likely to prey on the weak than on the deserving. Since about half of all rapes occur while in the government's possession the best way to combat rape is to reduce this. There is literally no better place to start in terms of numbers.

        citations:

        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... [dailymail.co.uk]

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Always, always, rehabilitation first and punishment last. Even animal trainers know this, let alone people we are relying to retrain people into being good citizens. Only one real hard bite when it comes to rehabilitation first, no rehabilitation, no release. So you need better standard cells, more compassionate containment for those who can not be rehabilitated and thus should not be released, rather than a set punishment term.

          Logically prison should be altered to be prisons within a prison. So prison mor

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        "I know, let's rape the guy to teach him a lesson. That'll surely work, right? Let's make sure he turns into a hardened criminal or gets murdered because he did something I don't like!" That's not how a civilized society works. You are welcome to bring that brand of justice to the middle east or some other shit hole area of the world.

        • Think of it as an act of corrective love. Like your priest told you.

    • Don't know which counts (3 out of 8) he is convicted... Anyone can take a look at the SEC filing [sec.gov] if interested...

    • That's bullshit. I hate the guy as much as anyone but with ponzi scheme people lose money. Yes he lied and broke many disclosure laws but he wasn't actually stealing money. My guess is he gets off light with just parole or something.

  • Brought it down on himself (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday August 04, 2017 @03:36PM (#54942581) Homepage Journal

    This is the Mr. Shkreli who Daraprim from $13.50 to $750/pill. Daraprim is an antiparasitic drug, used to treat pneumonia in conjunction with HIV, toxoplasmosis (sometimes called "mad cat lady disease") and another really nasty parasitic disease.

    When you do stuff like that, people look really closely at whatever else you are doing.

    It also led Imprimis to make a $1/pill replacement for the drug.

    • that should say "raised the price of Diaprim" ...

    • This is the Mr. Shkreli who Daraprim from $13.50 to $750/pill. Daraprim is an antiparasitic drug, used to treat pneumonia in conjunction with HIV, toxoplasmosis (sometimes called "mad cat lady disease") and another really nasty parasitic disease.

      When you do stuff like that, people look really closely at whatever else you are doing.

      It also led Imprimis to make a $1/pill replacement for the drug.

      Or just a lead aspirin (only half kidding). In any case this shows quite well how not letting us import drugs from other countries is an utter scam. We can have "free trade" deals so that all the drugs are made overseas yet we can't buy them from overseas. Utter scam - and it shows how neither D nor R is really on your side as both have had a chance to change this.

      • Re:Brought it down on himself (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:58PM (#54943221) Homepage Journal

        Most of the elected representatives are my age or older. I went to school with kids who had been injured by thalidomide (hi Anthony, wherever you are!) They are going to be very careful about pharma.

        And yes, the pharma companies have the best government they could buy, I can't deny that either.

        I am fine with drug imports if they are what they say they are, and are made with compliance to health-based standards. But somebody has to audit all of them. There is no shortage of quacks and thieves.

        • Re:Brought it down on himself (Score:4, Informative)

          by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @05:45PM (#54943619)

          Most of the elected representatives are my age or older. I went to school with kids who had been injured by thalidomide (hi Anthony, wherever you are!) They are going to be very careful about pharma.

          And yes, the pharma companies have the best government they could buy, I can't deny that either.

          I am fine with drug imports if they are what they say they are, and are made with compliance to health-based standards. But somebody has to audit all of them. There is no shortage of quacks and thieves.

          Simply get them directly from Canada or another 1st world country. This isn't as hard as it's made out to be if we look for solutions instead of excuses.

      • It's not entirely a scam; the problem is they lump in countries with excellent controls, like Canada, with countries like India. Counterfeit products with different amounts of the active ingredient, another active ingredient that may do something entirely different, or no active ingredient at all are very common when ordering prescription drugs from companies based there. It's not fearmongering over a super-rare occurrence, it's a very common occurrence.
        While the libertarian in me supports peoples ability
    • He just talked about it unapologetically. The other rich ass holes came after him when he wouldn't shut up about the scheme.
    • If he was smart, he would've come back with the suggestion that he was just doing it to highlight issues with the current system.

    • This is the Mr. Shkreli who Daraprim from $13.50 to $750/pill.

      The pharmaceutical industry is a quirky, nasty beast. A doctor I know told me that he has treated patients with leg cramps successfully with quinine . . . as in, a Gin Tonic . . . but without the Gin . . . kind of like a "Zen" Gin Tonic, with no Gin.

      Anyway, you can't patent quinine, so some pharmaceutical want to discourage the use of quinine . . . and replace it with more "profitable" medications. I would normally just right off the doctor as one of those conspiracy kooks . . . but these days . . . not

    • Nice one Bruce. Most always appreciate your posts.

  • I'll believe it when I see it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @03:37PM (#54942583) Homepage
    He'll be out of prison in under 5 years and go right back to do all the things that made him rich at the expense of other people... He's rich and white... and our justice system is baby soft on white collar criminals.
    • A long prison sentence would not necessarily be in everyone's best interest (do taxpayers really want to pay this twit's food and doctor bills?). An extended period of probation (and the fact that he's now a felon) to discourage companies from dealing with him seems like as decent a remedy as we could hope for. I'd be stoked to see him slapped with a maximum sentence, but that odds of that seem vanishingly small.
    • I doubt it because his crime in this case was cheating rich, white people. If he had cheated poor people that would have been forgiven and forgotten.

    • I disagree. He'll never see the inside of a prison. He is rich, after all, and in our system of justice, that provides a significant amount of immunity.

  • Rules For Getting Away With Stealing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IonOtter ( 629215 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @03:40PM (#54942621) Homepage

    1: NEVER STEAL FROM RICH PEOPLE. Only steal from middle-class and below.

    2. If you're still going to steal from rich people, make sure they're not white.

    3. If you obey rules 1 & 2, don't be such a pulsating rectal cyst that even rich white people hate you.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      Well, he almost saved it -- he stole from rich people, but ultimately he made them a profit.

      Really, if the securities issues was *all* he had done, I think he wouldn't ever have been charged with anything under a kind of "no harm, no foul" mindset. My guess is that the kind of thing he did probably happens all the time, especially in small funds run by inexperienced or aggressive fund managers. The ones that manage to cover it all get away with.

      But no, he had to be a complete asshole, both as a human bein

  • Apparently in spite of him being one of the most despised people in the country - people who were called for jury duty reacted negatively towards him in the jury screening process even if they didn't know who he was - they still managed to pull together an impartial jury. I'd be surprised if his attorneys don't have an appeal filed before the end of the day Monday.

    Don't get me wrong, I have no pities for him whatsoever, but I would think they would base an appeal on the difficulty of finding an imparti

  • Video (Score:5, Interesting)

    by techsoldaten ( 309296 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:00PM (#54942775) Journal

    I heard his interview after the verdicts were announced:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

    Very proud of the return for investors. Plans to keep working on the remaining counts, this will likely end up being appealed.

    I actually believe this was all a marketing campaign for him personally. The fact he's still in some form of legal jeopardy doesn't seem to phase him much.

    He recognized that the costs of a necessary medicine are paid by insurance companies that gouge in other areas as well, and promoted the hell out of that fact. There's a part of me that wants to say this is some form of corporate theater, and he's auditioning for a much larger part in exploiting the financial system.

  • "HA HA!"

    -Nelson Muntz

  • You could've been one of the pregnant women who needed the drug you jacked up the price of...or one of their fetuses.

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