Exploitative pharmaceutical price gouger Martin Shkreli arrested on suspicion of running a Ponzi scheme
Yesterday, Martin Shkreli (whose name is pronounced ‘SHKRELL-ee’), the son of Albanian immigrants and a former pupil of the “elite Manhattan public school for the intellectually gifted” Hunter, took to Twitter and stated: “Great to be home. Thanks for the support”. His post received 1,100 likes and 462 retweets but in spite of this, the now deposed chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals cannot claim to have achieved his finest hour.
Self-styled “world’s most eligible bachelor” Shkreli – whose first spell in the limelight came after he acquired a decades-old drug used to treat an infection that can be devastating for babies and people with AIDS and then, overnight, raising the price from £9.10 to £503 ($13.50 to $750) a pill – was arrested by the FBI on Thursday on securities fraud and wire fraud charges relating to an alleged Ponzi scheme at his first biopharmaceutical company, Retrophin. Of that business, an FBI official commented: “[This business is a] securities fraud trifecta of lies, deceit and greed”.
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Accompanying a photo gallery of Shkreli’s ‘walk of shame’ during his arrest, Gawker’s Sam Biddle remarked: “Let’s all look at the bad man in chains… The most hated man in pharmaceuticals and whatever zip code he’s currently in…” He is right and for that reason we make Martin Shkreli our much deserved Wally of the Week.
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2 comments
Albanian gangster
He’s hardly in the league of Bernie Madoff.