Jury gets Shkreli

Pharma Bro fraud deliberations to begin

MARTIN SHKRELI’S fate is now in the hands of a Brooklyn federal jury.

Deliberations in the Pharma Bro’s securities fraud trial will begin Monday morning after closing arguments finally came to a close Friday.

Marathon summations followed a month-long trial scrutinizing the ways Shkreli ran his hedge funds and built a pharmaceutical company.

Prosecutors say Shkreli, 34, (right) was a calculating con artist who sweettalked investors. He lied and played a shell game to prop up his failing funds and fledgling pharma company Retrophin, they said.

Shkreli’s lawyers say their client — a “genius” wrapped up in his own mind as he built up his company — made good faith efforts to get his investors profits. And they definitely got profits in the end, his lawyers said.

“Who lost anything? Nobody,” defense attorney Ben Brafman told jurors Friday.

“They cannot throw stuff against the wall and hope it sticks,” he said. “This case has so many reasonable doubts, you must hesitate.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacquelyn Kasulis said Brafman’s closing pitch was just a series of distractions from “the avalanche of evidence in this case. An avalanche that buries the defendant.”

Kasulis said it “doesn't matter if you pay people back years later after you’ve stolen money. Those people are still victims of fraud.”

Shkreli wasn’t special and above the law, Kasulis said. He was a “con man who stole millions.”

Kasulis told the jury, “Now it’s up to you to finally tell the defendant, ‘It’s over. It’s done. No more.’”

The defense didn’t call any witnesses in the case. Instead, the goal was trying to deflate the prosecution case with cross examinations.

For example, Brafman told jurors the Retrophin CEO who took Shkreli’s place at the company “had a very real motive to get Martin convicted.”

The company has a pending civil case against Shkreli that would get a big boost if Shkreli was a felon, Brafman said.

Prosecutors insist Shkreli wrongly turned Retrophin into his “personal piggy bank” to pay back his stiffed hedge fund investors.

“You can’t rob Peter to pay Paul. It doesn’t work that way,” Kasulis told jurors.

Shkreli faces up to 20 years if convicted.

It was around 3:45 Friday afternoon when Judge Kiyo Matsumoto finished instructing the jury on how to weigh the case. She asked the seven women and five men if they wanted to jump right into deliberations or start fresh on Monday.

“Monday” was the emphatic response.