Shkreli’s bedroom lies: gay financier

Martin Shkreli tried to lead on a gay financial bigwig — talking about hooking up with men and saying other things “of a gay nature,” the man testified Tuesday.

Steven Richardson, a 63year-old consultant, claimed that as their friendship progressed, he came to believe that Shkreli (inset) mused about having sex with men only in order to get closer to him.

The former American Express VP, who poured more than $400,000 into Shkreli’s MSMB Capitol in 2009 and 2010, said that Shkreli, on trial in Brooklyn federal court for securities fraud, “was starting to say certain things of a gay nature that started to worry me a bit.

“I thought maybe he was saying things to me because he thought I would want to hear them,” said Richardson, who also worked for The Boston Consulting Group.

“He was saying things to me like, ‘Maybe I’ll have sex with a guy in the office,’ or we’d be at a restaurant and there’d be a waiter and he’d say, ‘Maybe I should hook up with him.’ ”

Richardson said he got so sick of hearing the com- ments, he led Shkreli into his own bedroom to call him out.

“I walked him into the bedroom and I sat him onto the bed with me,” following cocktails in Richardson’s Chelsea apartment in March 2010, the consultant told jurors.

“Here you are in a gay man’s bedroom,” he told Shkreli. “Do you have any physical feelings for me?”

“He took a second and said, ‘No, I like you a lot but I don’t,’ ” Richardson testified.

Prosecutors allege that Shkreli, 34, rolled investors’ money from MSMB Capitol into his pharmaceutical start-up company, Retrophin, then used unauthorized Retrophin funds to pay back lenders after he lost all their capitol.