Business Day

‘Most hated man’ in US lives with sister

- Erik Larson and Patricia Hurtado

Martin Shkreli, the former pharmaceut­ical CEO who served almost seven years in prison for securities fraud, is earning $2,500 a month consulting for a law firm and living with his sister in Queens, New York, according to the US Probation Office.

Shkreli has had a mostly “positive adjustment” since being released from prison in 2022 and is employed by the Law Office of Christophe­r K Johnston, according to a probation report filed on Tuesday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. The report did not elaborate on Shkreli’s duties or say how or when he got the job. Neither the law firm nor Shkreli’s attorney immediatel­y responded to messages seeking comment.

When contacted by phone, Shkreli said: “I will only comment if you give me significan­t financial compensati­on.”

The former Turing Pharmaceut­icals CEO did have an initial delay in carrying out his mandatory community service of 20

SHKRELI WAS ONCE A MULTIMILLI­ONAIRE WHO ADORNED HIS WALLS WITH A PICASSO

hours a month, which resulted in a technical violation of his supervisio­n, according to the filing. Shkreli blamed the delay on scheduling conflicts and mental health issues and has been in compliance since April 3. Shkreli also completed his mandatory therapy appointmen­ts in 2022, the probation office said, but he will be “re-referred for mental health treatment” due to his “selfreport­ed struggles.” The filing did not elaborate on what those struggles were.

Dubbed “the most hated man in America” after he raised the price of a potentiall­y life-saving drug by 5,000%, Shkreli was convicted in 2017 of defrauding investors in two hedge funds. In May 2022, he was released four months early from a low-security federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvan­ia, and transferre­d to a halfway house.

Shkreli was once a multimilli­onaire who adorned his walls with a Picasso, drank rare wines, owned an Enigma encryption machine used by the Nazis in World War 2, letters by Charles Darwin and Ada Lovelace, the English mathematic­ian celebrated as the first mechanical general purpose computer inventor, and famously bought the only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a

Time in Shaolin. Those possession­s were all later sold to cover his penalties and liabilitie­s.

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