“The only person to blame ... is me”
Former pharmaceutical CEO Shkreli, who admitted to many mistakes and apologized to investors, receives seven years in prison for securities fraud.
NEW YORK » The smirk wiped off his face, a crying Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud Friday in a hard fall for the pharmaceutical-industry bad boy vilified for jacking up the price of a lifesaving drug.
Shkreli, the boyish-looking, 34-yearold entrepreneur dubbed the “Pharma Bro” for his loutish behavior, was handed his punishment after a hearing in which he and his attorney struggled with limited success to make him a sympathetic figure. His own lawyer confessed to wanting to punch him in the face sometimes.
The defendant hung his head and choked up as he admitted to many mistakes and apologized to the investors he was convicted of defrauding. At one point, a clerk handed him a box of tissues.
“I’m not the same person I was,” Shkreli said. “I know right from wrong. I know what it means to tell the truth and what it means to lie.”
He also said: “The only person to blame for me being here today is me. There is no conspiracy to take down Martin Shkreli. I took down Martin Shkreli.”
In the end, U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto gave him a sentence that fell well short of the 15 years prosecutors wanted but was a lot longer than the 18 months his lawyer asked for. He was also fined $75,000.
Shkreli was found guilty in August of lying to investors in two failed hedge funds and cheating them out of millions. The case was unrelated to the 2015 furor in which he increased by 5,000 percent the price of Daraprim, a previously cheap drug used by people with the AIDS virus or other immune system disorders, but his arrest was seen as rough justice by the many enemies he made with his smug and abrasive behavior online and off.
The judge ruled earlier that Shkreli would have to forfeit more than $7.3 million in a brokerage account and personal assets, including a one-of-a-kind WuTang Clan album that he boasted of buying for $2 million.
Defense attorney Benjamin Brafman described Shkreli as a misunderstood eccentric who used unconventional means to make his defrauded investors even wealthier. He told the court that he sometimes wants to hug Shkreli and sometimes wants to punch him, but that his outspokenness shouldn’t be held against him.
“It’s like the kids today who hit send before they really understand what they texted,” Brafman said.
Shkreli seemed to treat the case like a big joke. After his arrest in December 2015, he taunted prosecutors, got kicked off of Twitter for harassing a female journalist, heckled Hillary Clinton from the sidewalk outside her daughter’s home, gave speeches with the conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and spent countless hours livestreaming himself from his apartment.