‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli to receive sentencing for fraud

Today, Friday 9 March, marks the ‘day of reckoning’ for Martin Shkreli — the USA’s ‘most hated man’ aka ‘Pharma Bro’ — with his sentencing due from US District Court Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, the world will soon learn the fate of the disgraced pharma exec.

One thing to be said of Shkreli is that his antics have certainly grabbed him a lot of air time and headlines: From hiking up the price of a life-saving drug by more than 5,000% to refusing to cooperate with Congress and getting into a slanging match with the Wu Tang Clan.

But his sentence, for which Shkreli’s lawyers have requested 18 months or less in prison and prosecutors no shorter than 15 years, is not for the ‘price gouging’ of Daraprim that initially gained him his notoriety but for lying to investors in his hedge funds and his illegal control of the shares of his biotech company Retrophin.

Arrested three years ago, in 2015, it wasn’t until August last year (2017) that Shkreli was found guilty of three counts of securities fraud by a somewhat ‘difficult to come by’ jury (as published by Harper's).

His crimes have been described by federal officials as a quasi-Ponzi scheme and the prosecutors have called for his sentencing to be at least 15 years in prison. And as Dominic Rushe reports in The Guardian, it may be Shkreli’s arrogance that may land him a more lengthy sentence in the end. In Rushe’s article he speaks with John Coffee of Columbia law school who likens the Shkreli case to one against a hedge fund manager, Raj Rajaratnam, which ended in a conviction of 11 years being handed out.

Shkreli’s case may not have been helped either by his outlandish request after being convicted for a hair from Hilary Clinton (including follicle) for which he offered $5,000 dollars. This was deemed as a demonstration of posing an ongoing danger in the eyes of Judge Matsumoto, who revoked his bail and ordered him to remain behind bars until sentencing.

Although, according to a letter Shkreli wrote to the judge in hopes of a lighter sentence this stint in prison since his conviction has been ‘a frightening wake-up call’ and that he now understands that he needs to change.