Do not call me Bro, pal
A MANHATTAN lawyer accused of colluding with Martin Shkreli says prosecutors have it all wrong — he’s just another victim of the convicted Pharma Bro.
As the Brooklyn federal trial started Friday for Shkreli’s codefendant, Evan Greebel, prosecutors and defense lawyers painted widely different pictures of the attorney who’s now in the case of his life.
Over the summer, Shkreli’s securities fraud trial ended with a split verdict convicting him on three of eight counts. Greebel’s facing two conspiracy counts — one where Shkreli, 34, was acquitted and one where he was convicted.
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Kessler said Greebel, 44, was Shkreli’s “right hand man” in the businessman’s plots to loot his fledgling pharmaceutical company, Retrophin, and secretly control its shares. According to Kessler, Greebel drafted “sham” agreements that paid Retrophin funds and stock to Shkreli’s hedge fund investors, who were under the mistaken impression they were making money in his hedge funds.
Kessler claimed Greebel betrayed Retrophin’s trust and best interests, all so he could keep raking in more money. Greebel was making $900,000 a year at his white-shoe firm by April 2014, Kessler noted.
Greebel’s attorney, Reed Brodsky, painted a dark picture too — as in Shkreli kept Greebel in the dark on his dealings, just as Shkreli had conned sophisticated hedge fund investors.
Brodsky said Shkreli fed Greebel certain facts, but didn’t tell him others, like details on the hedge fund losses and an investigation by regulators.
“They got it wrong. There was a rush to judgment,” Brodsky said about the prosecution case.
The original plan was for Greebel and Shkreli to have a trial together. But the pair wanted nothing to do with each other — especially Greebel who worried he’d get sunk by juror ill will directed at Shkreli.
On Friday, Brodsky tried distancing his client from Shkreli, saying the men were not “peas in a pod.” Brodsky said Shkreli was already working on his outspoken, controversial persona when he met Greebel, a husband and father with a “quiet life.”
Brodsky displayed a PowerPoint image of a gaping crack between Shkreli and Greebel’s names.
Greebel faces up to 20 years in prison and the loss of his law license if convicted. Brodsky insisted there was no way Greebel, a successful lawyer, would’ve thrown away everything for Shkreli, “a guy he just met.”
Even though Shkreli was convicted in August, he stayed out on $5 million bail. Last month, Judge Kiyo Matsumoto sent Shkreli to jail for his online call for $5,000 to the person who could pluck a strand of Hillary Clinton’s hair.
On Thursday, Matsumoto ruled Shkreli couldn’t have access to the hefty bond even though he was behind bars.
Shkreli is scheduled to be sentenced in January and he’s vowed to appeal.