Shkreli,
notorious for massively raising the price of a life-saving drug, has been found
guilty of deceiving investors in a pair of hedge funds. He had been arrested on
embezzlement charges in 2015.
Deutsche Welle, 4 August 2017
A US court
in Brooklyn on Friday convicted the former drug company executive Martin
Shkreli on two counts of security fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit
fraud in a month-long, high-profile trial.
Read more: 'Pharma bro' Shkreli's trial begins asex-pharma CEO faces allegations of cheating investors
Federal
prosecutors had accused Shkreli of defrauding investors in his hedge funds MSMB
Capital and MSMB Healthcare and of using misappropriated money and stock from
his old drug company, Retrophin Inc, to pay them back millions in losses. The
charges went back to the period between 2009 and 2014, when he was Retrophin
CEO.
Shkreli,
34, had told "lies upon lies," Assistant US Attorney Alixandra Smith
told the court in closing arguments, while another prosecutor, Jacquelyn
Kasulis, described him as "a con man who stole millions."
Notorious
price-gouging
However,
the court's decision was difficult to reach in view of the fact that some
investors testified that they had indeed become richer through Shkreli.
"Who
lost anything? Nobody," said Ben Brafman, the defense attorney, in his
closing argument.
Shkreli was
cleared on five other conspiracy counts.
Even before
the trial, Shkreli had attained a degree of notoriety by raising the price of the anti-infection drug Daraprim by 5,000 percent in 2015 as chief executive of
Turing Pharmaceuticals. His behavior led to his receiving the nickname
"Pharma bro," with many people seeing him as the embodiment of corporate
greed.
He was also
known for his sometimes hours-long live streams on YouTube that often showed
him engaged in mundane occupations such as petting his cat, although he also
gave financial and chemistry lessons in the videos.
tj/gsw (AP, Reuters, afp)
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