Smirking 'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison for defrauding investors.
Smirking 'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison for defrauding investors.
Martin Shkreli, the smirking "Pharma Bro" vilified for jacking up the price of a lifesaving drug, has been sentenced to seven years in prison for defrauding investors in two failed hedge funds.
The self-promoting pharmaceutical executive notorious for trolling critics online was convicted in a securities fraud case last year.
The sentence is unconnected to the price increase dispute.
Shkreli, worlds apart from his usual cocky persona, cried as he told US District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto he made many mistakes.
"I am terribly sorry I lost your trust," he said. "You deserve far better."
"I want the people who came here today to support me to understand one thing, the only person to blame for me being here today is me," he said. "I took down Martin Shkreli."
In this courtroom sketch former pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli, left, is seated next to his lawyer Ben Brafman in federal court on Friday, March 9, 2018 in New York.
He said that he hopes to make amends and learn from his mistakes.
Prosecutors argued that the 34-year-old was a master manipulator who conned wealthy investors and deserved 15 years in prison.
His lawyers defended him as a misunderstood eccentric who used unconventional means to make those same investors even wealthier, and deserved 18 months or less in prison.
The judge insisted that the punishment was not about Shkreli's online antics or raising the cost of the drug.
"This case is not about Mr. Shkreli's self-cultivated public persona... nor his controversial statements about politics or culture," the judge said, calling his crimes serious.
Earlier this week, the judge ruled that Shkreli would have to forfeit more than US$7.3 million in a brokerage account and personal assets, including his one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album that he boasted he bought for $2 million.
The judge said the property would not be seized until Shkreli had a chance to appeal.
Attorney Benjamin Brafman told Judge Matsumoto on Friday that he sometimes wants to hug Shkreli and sometimes wants to punch him in the face , but he said his outspokenness shouldn't be held against him.
Assistant US Attorney Jacquelyn Kasulis said Shkreli deserved the stiffer sentence not because he is "the most hated man in America" but because he is a criminal convicted of serious fraud. She said the judge had to consider his history and said he has "no respect whatsoever" for the law, or the court proceedings.
Unapologetic from the beginning, when he was roundly publicly criticised for defending the 5000 per cent price increase of Daraprim, a previously cheap drug used to treat HIV, Shkreli seemed to drift through his criminal case as if it was one big joke.
After his arrest in December 2015 and up until his sentencing today, "Pharma Bro" kept up his cocky persona, as he taunted prosecutors, got kicked off of Twitter for harassing a female journalist, heckled Hillary Clinton from the sidewalk outside her daughter's home, gave speeches with the conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and spent countless hours livestreaming himself in his apartment.
Throughout the process, Shkreli said a number of times that he was unlikely to be sentenced to jail.
Things abruptly changed, though, last fall after he jokingly offered his online followers a $5000 bounty to anyone who could get a lock of Hillary Clinton's hair. The judge revoked his bail and threw him in jail, a decision that she defended on Friday.
That didn't tame Shkreli completely. He corresponded with journalists, ridiculing the personal appearance of one female reporter who asked him for an interview.
The judge added today that it is up to Congress to fix the issue of the HIV drug price-hike.
