Karma Strikes: Price-Gouging Pharma CEO Arrested For Fraud and Embezzlement

[Cliffy]

Karma has finally come for Martin Shkreli, America’s most hated man. The hedge-fund manager who became notorious for buying the rights to critical anti-parasite drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS patients and then jacking up the price by 5000% (from $13.50 to $750!) has found himself in a sticky situation. The personification of capitalist excess, white privilege, and disgusting smugness has found himself arrested by federal authorities for securities fraud. After the outrage over his price-gouging ways died down, he broke his public promise and refused to lower the price of Daraprim. He recently acquired KaloBios Pharmaceuticals and is planning to raise the price of courses of benznidazole, used to treat a disease in Latin America known as “Chagas,” from $100 to $100,000. His utter lack of remorse from ripping off the sick only makes this news even sweeter.

Karma Strikes: Price-Gouging Pharma CEO Arrested For Fraud and Embezzlement | Occupy Democrats

 

[lone wolf]

 

[Ludlow]

Some years back I was working in New Orleans after Katrina. We installed marbles bath tub enclosures in houses and apartments. One job was his little rat trap hotel in one of the poorer districts. The rent they were charging for these dumps was enormous. Greed runs pretty rampant in my country and it doesn't usually bother folks to put the screws to the unfortunate . they justify it by crying out, "supply and demand " or, whatever the market will bear". Truth is we're a pack of greedy bastards and we don't mind it much if you have to pay a little more to line our pockets.

 

[mentalfloss]

SJWs win again.

 

[lone wolf]

Y'know, if you'd speak somewhere beyond MSN or textese, you might just make sense enough to fill out that pedigree

 

[coldstream]

Shkreli faces 20 years in Federal Prison under the sentencing guidelines.. and in the Federal System you will only get 15% of your sentence reduced by way of parole.

So he'll be about 50 when he gets out (i'm assuming the U.S. Attorney has a pretty solid case of a Ponzi scheme). Hopefully he won't contract AIDs in prison.. because he'll be unlikely to afford his own medicine once the investor lawsuits work their way through the civil judicial system.

 

[bill barilko]

Typical psychopath capitalist shythead.

 

[JLM]

Typical psychopath capitalist shythead.

That f**ker needs to be taken out to the parking lot for severe sh*t kicking!

Shkreli faces 20 years in Federal Prison under the sentencing guidelines.. and in the Federal System you will only get 15% of your sentence reduced by way of parole.

So he'll be about 50 when he gets out (i'm assuming the U.S. Attorney has a pretty solid case of a Ponzi scheme). Hopefully he won't contract AIDs in prison.. because he'll be unlikely to afford his own medicine once the investor lawsuits work their way through the civil judicial system.

I don't see why the 15% reduction!

 

[Corduroy]

In jacking up the price of a medicine, Martin Shkreli did nothing wrong in the eyes of the law. Our economic system supports and rewards this kind of behaviour. Shkreli was universally acknowledged as a despicable human being. Nearly everyone thought that practice of buying a drug patent and raising the price 5000% was obscene and that something should be done about it.

But nothing was done. And Shkreli walked free. He was a pariah but he was financially rewarded for it.

Now he got caught for something and he's going to jail, but for what? Is he going to jail for fleecing the sick and the poor? No, he's going to jail because he defrauded rich people. His crimes against the poor are going unpunished. They aren't even crimes under the law. It is his crimes against the rich that are actually illegal and got him in trouble. Our economic system is designed to make people like Shkreli rich. Exploiting the poor is its entire basis. Don't fool yourselves into thinking this is justice for his drug pricing. It's not. It's justice for the rich.

 

[damngrumpy]

They got him for something else not the real crime. I see the need to step in
in some cases and set the profit margin in gouging cases or in the public
interest. He should not be allowed to do what he did any more than the price
gouging oil companies and even the crooked bankers.
Profit I agree with when does it become gouging and that should be determined

 

[Retired_Can_Soldier]

 

[Curious Cdn]

I hope that Bubba, his funny bunkmate in the slammer gives him an incurable disease.

 

[JLM]

In jacking up the price of a medicine, Martin Shkreli did nothing wrong in the eyes of the law. Our economic system supports and rewards this kind of behaviour.

Don't despair, there's likely a lot of poor people in the klink to keep him company and they'll have a lot of chances to amuse themselves!

 

[Corduroy]

Don't despair, there's likely a lot of poor people in the klink to keep him company and they'll have a lot of chances to amuse themselves!

I'm sure it's entertaining to imagine that sort of thing, but I'm more interested in the system that allows Shkreli to do what he did. If he gets assaulted in prison, that's not justice either.

 

[JLM]

I'm sure it's entertaining to imagine that sort of thing, but I'm more interested in the system that allows Shkreli to do what he did. If he gets assaulted in prison, that's not justice either.

Maybe the jurisdiction that operates with the system..........."give a man enough rope and he'll hang himself" works best. Very few things that are legislated work very well, e.g. Prohibition in the '20s

 

[Corduroy]

Maybe the jurisdiction that operates with the system..........."give a man enough rope and he'll hang himself" works best. Very few things that are legislated work very well, e.g. Prohibition in the '20s

I think you're using "jurisdiction" incorrectly. I'm not sure what you're talking about.

 

[tay]

Just days before the start of his fraud trial, Martin Shkreli is running short on cash.

A lawyer for the brash former pharmaceutical executive asked a federal judge to cut his bail from $5 million to $2 million, freeing up $3 million for tax and legal expenses. There’s no risk that Shkreli will flee, the attorney added.

“Today, the majority of Mr. Shkreli’s assets are illiquid,” defense lawyer Benjamin Brafman said in a June 15 letter to U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in Brooklyn, New York. “The current bail is far in excess of what is required.”

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn oppose Shkreli’s bid to cut his bail, Brafman said. John Marzulli, a spokesman for Acting U.S. Attorney Bridget Rohde, declined to comment.

Shkreli owes money to his civil lawyers for work related to this case and others, Brafman said. He also has debts to forensic accountants who are addressing state and federal tax claims against him

“Although Mr. Shkreli is still worth a lot of money due to his ownership interest in Turing, that interest cannot be sold, nor can it be pledged,” Brafman wrote.

“More to the point, there should be no doubt about Mr. Shkreli’s intention to appear when required,” he added, noting that Shkreli would lose his interest in Turing, now worth tens of millions of dollars, were he to flee.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ep-cut-in-5-million-bail-as-fraud-trial-nears

 

[Cliffy]

OMG! My heart is bleeding purple piss.
Forking sum bag should have all his assets seized.

 

[Curious Cdn]

Maybe, Trump'll put him in charge of his new healthcare plan.

 

[Jinentonix]

OMG! My heart is bleeding purple piss.
Forking sum bag should have all his assets seized.

I'm laughing at his lawyer. "Please lower his bail so we can get paid." :lol:
You chose to represent the scum bag, deal with it. The excuse that his non-cash assets are "illiquid" is laughable. They can be made liquid by selling them.