Shkreli to be jailed over Clinton Facebook post

Martin Shkreli, the former pharmaceutical executive who is awaiting sentencing for a fraud conviction, was sent to jail Wednesday after a federal judge found that he presented a threat to the com- munity because he had offered money for a strand of Hillary Clinton’s hair.

Shkreli, who was free on $5 million bail while awaiting sentencing, offered $5,000 on Facebook to anyone who could “grab a hair” from Clin- ton during her book tour.

“There has been a dan- ger presented through this post,” Judge Kiyo A. Matsu- moto said at the hearing in U.S. District Court in Brook- lyn, N.Y.

At the same hearing, Shkreli was scheduled to be sentenced in January. He most likely will not be released before then, unless his lawyers can show that he is not a threat.

Shkreli was convicted in August of three counts of fraud relating to two hedge funds and a pharmaceutical company he previously ran.

Prosecutors, citing the Facebook post, wrote in a filing last week that Shkreli was becoming a public threat. The post also prompted a Secret Service investigation.

Although Shkreli edited the post to say that it had been satirical and later took it down altogether, prosecutors wrote that “there is a significant risk that one of his many social media followers or others who learn of his offers through the media will take his statements seriously — as has happened previously — and act on them.”

Just before his conviction, prosecutors wrote, Shkreli had made a sexual threat toward a female journalist.