Pharmacy executive is denied prison release
Martin Shkreli’s request to go free is called ‘delusional.’
NEW YORK — A judge has rejected the request of convicted pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli to be let out of prison to research a coronavirus treatment, noting that probation officials viewed that claim as the type of “delusional selfaggrandizing behavior” that led to his conviction.
U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto said in a ninepage ruling Saturday that the man known as the “Pharma Bro” failed to demonstrate extraordinary and compelling factors that would require his release under home confinement rules designed to move vulnerable inmates out of institutions during the pandemic.
The low-security prison in Allenwood, Pa., where the 37-year-old Shkreli is locked up has reported no cases of coronavirus among inmates and staff, and there’s no evidence in his medical files to suggest a childhood bout with asthma continues to pose a significant health problem, Matsumoto wrote.
“Disappointed but not unexpected,” said Shkreli’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman.
Shkreli is serving a sevenyear prison sentence for a 2017 conviction for lying to investors about the performance of two hedge funds he ran, withdrawing more money from those funds than he was entitled to get, and defrauding investors in a drug company, Retrophin, by hiding his ownership of some of its stock.
A judge ordered Shkreli to forfeit $7.3 million.
Brafman filed court papers last month asking federal authorities to release him for three months and allow him to live at his fiance’s New York City apartment so he could do laboratory work “under strict supervision.”
In a research proposal posted online, Shkreli called the pharmaceutical industry’s response to the pandemic “inadequate” and said researchers at every drug company “should be put to work until COVID-19 is no more.”
Probation officials noted that a cure for coronavirus has “so far eluded the best medical and scientific minds in the world working around the clock.”
Shkreli first gained notoriety by buying the rights to a drug used to treat an infection that occurs in some AIDS, malaria and cancer patients and raising the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.