‘PHARM’ FROM NORMAL
Att’y: ‘Bro’ weird, innocent
NOT EVEN the Avengers could stop this uncivil war.
A lawyer for the reclusive billionaire who heads Marvel Entertainment was in Manhattan courtroom Wednesday trying to shield the comic king’s personal rolodex and “security protocol” from a rival neighbor.
Canadian businessman Harold Peerenboom sued Marvel Chairman Ike Perlmutter in Florida in 2013, alleging the superhero honcho smeared his name in an argument over management of the tennis center at the posh Sloan’s Curve community in Palm Beach.
Peerenboom said Perlmutter, 74, used Marvel staffers to orchestrate an anonymous hate mail campaign labeling him a Nazi and sexual predator.That led the case to Manhattan Supreme Court in 2015, where Peerenboom’s lawyers asked for details about Marvel’s involvement.
Perlmutter’s attorney sought permission Wednesday to redact information — like the phone number of Disney CEO Bob Iger from what is turned over to Peerenboom’s legal team. MARTIN SHKRELI is an odd duck.
At least that’s what his investors thought of him, his attorney told a federal court on Wednesday.
“Is he strange? Yes. Will you find him weird? Yes,” Shkreli’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman said as the former pharmaceutical CEO’s fraud trial kicked off.
Brafman painted his client as a troubled, misunderstood genius who “never intended to defraud anyone and that no one in this case was defrauded.”
“As Lady Gaga would say: He was born this way,” the attorney added.
The infamous upstart dubbed the “Pharma Bro” gained notoriety in 2015 for jacking up the price of an AIDS drug. He’s facing securities fraud charges for allegedly lying to investors in a hedge fund he ran, unrelated to his price gouging.
Prosecutors say that Shkreli is more than just an oddball, telling jurors that he built a bogus hedge fund empire on “lies upon lies.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Karthik Srinivasan detailed the charges against Shkreli, saying the 34-year-old operated an elaborate Ponzi-style fraud scheme in which he cheated investors out of more than $11 million between 2009 and 2014.
“He took investors’ money based on lies and continued to lie to them for months after he had lost all the money,” Srinivasan said.
Shkreli then looted a drug company he was running for $10 million in a secret plan to pay them back.
Seating a jury for the trial took nearly three days as prosecutors and defense lawyers struggled to find people who were unaware or able to ignore Shkreli’s reputation.
A few potential picks described him as a “snake” and “evil.”
“I really don’t like this person,” one excused juror told Judge Kiyo Matsumoto and the huddle of defense lawyers and prosecutors. “I can’t understand why someone would take a medication that people need and jack up the price.”
The court ran through 300 people before settling on the 12 jurors and six alternates who will hear the case.
The jury is made up of seven women and five men and includes a retired veterinarian, a software support technician and a parking meter repairman.
Shkreli, who giggled his way through the first two days of jury selection, looked serious on Wednesday as the trial began in earnest and prosecutors laid out their case.
He later became animated as Brafman detailed his eccentricities. Shkreli smiled and occasionally nodded in agreement as the attorney presented his opening statements.
“You may have reasons to hate Martin Shkreli. That is not a basis on which to convict,” Brafman said before urging the jury to be patient and hear all the evidence before deciding his client’s fate.
Shkreli faces up to 20 years behind bars if convicted.