Feds: No early spring for ‘Bro’
“Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli shouldn’t be released from prison early — because he’s a jerk to women and isn’t sorry for his crimes, Brooklyn federal prosecutors argue in a new court filing.
Assistant US Attorney Alixandra Smith filed a motion Thursday opposing Shkreli’s second bid for compassionate release.
She argues that his “demonstrated disdain for the criminal-justice system, both in threats of violence made against women” and “his lack of remorse,” weighed against freeing him nearly three years early from the federal prison in Allenwood, Pa.
Despite his trolling of female reporters and bizarre threats against Hillary Clinton, Shkreli has garnered some admirers.
He became involved with former Bloomberg News reporter Christie Smythe, who professed her love for the convicted fraudster in a tell-all Elle magazine article last month.
Smythe, who said she gave up her job and marriage to pursue a relationship with Shkreli, once defended his treatment of female reporters, tweeting, “I don’t think he’d hurt a woman, even a journalist.”
Shkreli, 37, infamously had his bail revoked in 2017 for offering his followers $5,000 for a strand of Hillary Clinton’s hair — after a jury found him guilty of defrauding investors in what prosecutors described as an $11 million
Ponzi scheme.
The former drug company CEO earned the moniker “The Most Hated Man in America” for jacking up the price of the AIDS drug Daraprim nearly 5,000 percent.
The Federal Trade Commission sued him over that last year.
The FTC and Smith both note that Shkreli has continued the anticompetitive scheme, which has forced patients whose lives depend on the drug to pay massive amounts of money.
Smith also argues that Shkreli’s minor health conditions don’t merit halving his seven-year sentence.
In his first compassionate-release motion, he argued that, due to allergies and asthma, he faced “potential death” if he contracted COVID-19.
The latest bid contends that his worsening mental health has “weaken[ed] his immune system.”