SHKRELI CALLED ‘GENIUS’, LIAR AS TRIAL STARTS
Defense lawyer says expharma CEO was victimized by coworkers, wealthy investors
Legal arguments in Martin Shkreli’s fraud trial began Wednesday with a prosecutor calling the so-called Pharma Bro a liar who scammed more than $10 million from investors and a defense lawyer calling him a “weird” but brilliant health care “genius” who is innocent.
Assistant U.S. Attorney G. Karthik Srinivasan outlined an alleged four-part scam in which Shkreli defrauded investors in a pair of health care-focused hedge funds he’d founded, and then went on to steal from Retrophin, a biotech company he launched in 2011 and was ousted from in 2014. Along the way, Shkreli lied to investors and hid efforts in which he tried to manipulate the share price of Retrophin’s stock, said Srinivasan.
“The evidence will prove that the defendant broke the law repeatedly,” Srinivasan said. “He did this by convincing (investors) he was a Wall Street genius. In reality, he was just a con man.”
Defense attorney Benjamin Brafman countered that Shkreli’s
Rain Man brilliance constituted the main asset of the hedge funds and Retrophin.
But, far from defrauding anyone, the defense lawyer said Shkreli was victimized by coworkers who questioned his sexuality, and by wealthy investors who eventually took control of Retrophin. The investors later helped prosecutors obtain evidence to support the 2015 indictment against the company’s founder, Brafman said.
“Is he strange? Yes. Will you find him weird? Yes,” said Brafman. Saying that Shkreli’s investors ultimately got back all their money and more, the defense lawyer added: “Buckle up your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen. You’re in for a good ride.”