Remember Martin Shkreli?
He was the Big Pharma CEO that raised the price of Daraprim, used to treat HIV and AIDS patients as well as toxoplasmosis, by 4000% earlier this year. Shkreli raised the price from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill overnight.
On Thursday Shkreli was arrested on Thursday and has been charged with securities fraud. The charges are not related to price gouging, but to his time as a hedge fund manager and running Retrophin, a biotechnology firm.
Shkreli is accused of stealing stock from Retrophin in order to pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. He started the company in 2011 to acquire old, neglected drugs used for rare diseases and then significantly increased their prices. He was fired from the company and sued by the board last year. They claimed they had “serious concerns about his conduct.”
In the complaint from Retrophin, the company claims that Shkreli, “Starting sometime in early 2012, and continuing until he left the company, used his control over Retrophin to enrich himself and to pay off claims of MSMB investors (who he had defrauded).”
After he raised the price of Daraprim earlier this year, America turned on him. He then claimed he would lower the price, but never said when or by how much. He then claimed that Daraprim would be free for people that needed it, which wasn’t actually true:
If you can afford our drugs with insurance, great. If you can’t, you can have it for free. Our system works.
— Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) December 16, 2015
@MartinShkreli you may want to address the physicians who addressed Congress who said that wasn’t true.
— CallaLilly101 (@CallaLilly101) December 16, 2015
After the backlash he attempted to donate to Bernie Sanders in order to get an audience with the presidential candidate, which backfired. Sanders refused to meet with him and donated his gift to a health clinic.
No wonder Shkreli has been dubbed “the most hated man in America.”
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