The Story:
On March 9, in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, a U.S. District Court judge sentenced a former hedge fund manager and drug company executive to seven years in prison.
Background:
Martin Shkreli was arrested in December 2015, and convicted in August 2017 and he has now been sentenced for the crime of defrauding his investors. He had become notorious three months before his arrest for increasing the price of an AIDS treatment drug, Daraprim, from $13.50 per pill to $750, an increase by 5,000%. Before the securities fraud became public knowledge, when Shkreli was chiefly known as a price gouger, the news website Slate was already calling him “the smirking face of drug-industry villainy.”
The Thing to Know:
At the sentencing hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacquelyn Kasulis said that a harsh sentence for the securities fraud would be justified because the fraud was not an “isolated lapse in judgment,” but was part of a pattern of conduct involving serial ponzi schemes.
