Exec Who Jacked Up Price of a Life-Saving Drug is Arrested

Shkreli was charged with securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy.

The pharmaceuticals tycoon has been arrested on fraud charges.

The indictment describes a series of emails in which Greebel appears to oversee the backdating of a stock transfer agreement between a Retrophin employee and Shkreli, who passed the shares to one of the hedge funds. “His plots were matched only by efforts to hide the fraud, which led him to operate his companies, including a publicly traded company, as a Ponzi scheme, where he used the assets of the new entity to pay off debts from the old entity”.

Shkreli left the company earlier this year and founded Turing Pharmaceuticals and, infamously, raised the price of Daraphim from per pill to 0 per pill.

He’s accused of conspiring with Shkreli in part of the scheme.

The Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group that urged Congress to investigate Shkreli’s price increases, called his arrest “long overdue” and added: “He has avoided accountability despite a pattern of fraudulent behavior”. After news broke of Shkreli’s arrest, shares were down by 50 percent before being halted indefinitely, pending receipt of additional information requested by the Nasdaq, according to MarketWatch.

It is unclear how the case and other continuing investigations could affect Turing or KaloBios.

On Thursday, Shkreli got his comeuppance when the Department of Justice announced he and his lawyer had been indicted in a multimillion dollar securities fraud.

Greebel was a partner at Katten Muchin during the time he worked for Retrophin as outside counsel and corporate secretary. First he becomes the target of the American media and becomes the most hated man in the country for raising the price of life saving AIDS medication by 5000 percent.

In recent days, he even said that journalists do not “matter” and asked about a Democratic presidential candidate, “If @BernieSanders was a parasite what would he be?” But he also refused to return the money, giving it to a community health center instead.

Wu-Tang Clan’s $2 million album is still in Martin Shkreli’s clutches. “We chose to give a significant portion of the proceeds to charity”.

He was later charged during the indictment, but he was released after posting $5 million bail. For months after MSMB ceased trading and suffered tremendous losses, Shkreli sent false updates to investors stating that profits were as high as 40%.

Retrophin, which fired Shkreli more than a year ago, has since sued Shkreli in federal court, seeking $65 million from him, accusing him of misusing the company’s cash and stock. Shkreli has previously denied any wrongdoing related to the matter.

Turing, with offices in NY and Switzerland, bought USA rights to sell Daraprim in August, when it had no competition.