Bro jailed over Hill ‘threat’
Convicted “Pharma-bro” swindler Martin Shkreli was decreed a “danger to society” Wednesday and jailed by a federal judge following Facebook posts in which the loudmouth former drug-company exec put a bounty out on Hillary Clinton’s hair.
Despite a groveling letter Tuesday from 34-year-old Shkreli (right, at court Wednesday), claiming the Sept. 4 social-media offering of $5,000 for a strand of the former secretary of state’s hair was an “awkward attempt at humor or satire,” Brooklyn federal Judge Kiyo Matsumoto revoked his $5 million bond and ordered him jailed pending a January sentencing hearing.
“What’s so funny about that?” the seething judge, so angry that she could barely speak, asked defense attorney Ben Brafman as a deflated Shkreli sat beside him, elbows on the table.
“One ongoing concern of mine is that he [Shkreli] has been touted as a brilliant young man, the mind of his generation, yet he lacks the ability to understand what’s appropriate,” the jurist said.
In the creepy posting about the failed presidential candidate, Shkreli said he would “pay $5,000 per hair obtained from Hillary Clinton” in what he implied would be an attempt to clone her. He later claimed the post was “satire.”
But Matsumoto said she worried what one of the ex-pharma exec’s 70,000 Facebook followers might do after such an inflammatory call to action.
Brafman continued to beg Matsumoto to reconsider throwing his Ponzischemer client behind bars while awaiting sentencing, saying, “Judge, we’ll do anything you ask.”
But the jurist wasn’t buying it, and ordered federal marshals to take the normally wisecracking Shkreli into custody.
The suddenly pale convict slipped a piece of paper in his briefcase before glancing at his attorneys.
Then he was guided by the marshals out of the courtroom.
It was a far cry from his January boasts to The Post: “I kind of think it would be exciting, you know, to spend six months or a year in prison.”
Shkreli, convicted last month of securities fraud, is facing up to 20 years.