Shkreli told ‘lies upon lies,’ prosecutors say in fraud trial
UNITED STATES: The bizarre case of a former hedge fund manager turned internet punchline sped to a close yesterday with prosecutors portraying Martin Shkreli as a liar who tricked investors into forking over millions and then hid his massive losses.
Shkreli told ‘‘lies upon lies,’’ Assistant US Attorney Alixandra E. Smith told a Brooklyn jury in closing statements that lasted more than two hours. He lied about the size of his hedge funds, whether they had an auditor and how they were performing. He lied about attending Columbia University, Smith said.
Smith meticulously recounted lies prosecutors say Shkreli told investors to persuade them to give him money, including that his hedge fund was worth millions when it was actually broke. ‘‘Depending on which investors he is talking to, he changes the story,’’ she said. ‘‘The defendant was making these misrepresentation because he knew by saying these things he would get people to give him money.’’
While Smith repeatedly called him a liar, Shkreli, 34, sat a few feet away smirking and swivelling in his chair. His father, who has attended every day of the trial, sat in the front row close by. Shkreli who has been nicknamed ‘‘Pharma Bro’’ on social media - became infamous for raising the price of a vital drug used by AIDS patients by 5000 per cent and then publicly lamenting that he didn’t raise it more.
But that is not why he is on trial. Shkreli is charged with defrauding investors at two hedge funds that he founded, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare. When one of the funds collapsed, rather than tell investors, Shkreli raised more money and then used the cash to start a pharmaceutical company, Retrophin, according to prosecutors. He also used investors’ money to pay off personal debts. When the hedge fund investors began to ask for their money, Shkreli paid them back using Retrophin money and stock. The arrangements were not approved by Retrophin’s board of directors and cost the company more than $10 million, according to prosecutors.
‘‘Retrophin was not responsible for the lies that were told to’’ Shkreli’s hedge fund investors, Smith said. ‘‘He made a choice to steal that money . . . and to use it pay back the investors he defrauded.’’
Shkreli’s defence team has sought to rebut the accusations with a simple argument: His investors were not victims but wealthy people whom Shkreli made even richer. Despite troubles with his hedge funds, Shkreli’s investors made a profit, attorneys said.
In closing arguments, Shkreli defence attorney Benjamin Brafman called his client a genius who did not intend to defraud investors. ’’If Martin Shkreli wanted to defraud these people, why did he sleep in his office for two years in a sleeping bag to make Retrophin a success?’’ Brafman asked. ‘‘Maybe he screwed up, maybe he made mistakes,’’ the attorney said, but ‘‘Martin Shkreli was always truthful to the mission to make Retrophin a success.’’
If Shkreli defrauded his investors, why did they continue to say positive things about him? Brafman asked. Why didn’t Retrophin require them to return the money Shkreli gave them? ‘‘This is rich people B.S., ladies and gentleman,’’ he said.
Shkreli’s fate will soon be in the hands of the jury - five men and seven women - who have sat through more than four weeks of testimony that veered between technical explanations of how hedge funds work and complicated accounting terms to riveting stories of Shkreli’s interactions with investors and employees, including one he threatened to drive into homelessness. He told one investor that he wanted to be like Steve Cohen, the billionaire hedge fund investor.
One of Shkreli’s investors, a gay man, testified that the former hedge fund manager sometimes made him feel ‘‘uncomfortable’’ by saying he might try to have sex with a male co-worker.
The case has captured the public’s attention as much for the charges Shkreli faces as his outsized personality. Even after being charged with eight counts of securities and wire fraud, Shkreli appeared to relish the media attention, taunting reporters on Twitter and smirking his way through a congressional hearing about rising drug prices.
Shkreli’s antics continued throughout the trial. One day he casually strolled into a room full of reporters and mocked prosecutors as the ‘‘junior varsity’’ and then lamented that ‘‘the world blames me for almost everything.’’ That incident drew a rebuke from US District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, who ordered him to stop talking to the media in the courthouse or outside on the street.
- Washington Post