‘It’s my fault’, says pharma fraudster as he is jailed for seven years

MARTIN SHKRELI, the former pharmaceuticals boss dubbed “Pharma Bro”, has been jailed for seven years for fraud.

Last August, he was found guilty of defrauding investors in two hedge funds he ran between 2009 and 2011, by sending false account statements and concealing huge losses, and then using money from a pharmaceutical company he founded, Retrophin, to pay them back.

He has been ordered to pay $7.36m (£5.3m) in forfeiture and was handed a further $75,000 fine yesterday.

Speaking in the court in Brooklyn before sentencing, Shkreli said: “The one person to blame for me being here today is me. Not the government. There is no conspiracy to take down Martin Shkreli.”

Shkreli gained notoriety after hiking the price of an Aids and cancer drug by 5,000pc to $750 per pill – a move which saw him branded the “most hated man in America”. He later gained a reputation for trolling his critics on social media, earning the nickname “Pharma Bro”. Shkreli has been in jail since September, despite initially being granted bail, after he told followers on social media he would pay them $5,000 to bring him hair from former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The decision to raise the price of the life-saving drug, Daraprim, sparked debate across the US over drugs pricing, and led to condemnation from both Donald Trump and Ms Clinton.

Mr Trump had pledged to stop price gouging in the pharmaceutical industry during his campaign.

However, doubts were recently cast over whether any policy will be introduced after a White House report last month claimed that regulations, hospitals and foreign governments were to blame for the high drug prices, not pharmaceutical companies themselves.