Moments ago, the Martin Shkreli jury announced its verdict, and while the ex-pharma exec was found not guilty on 5 of 8 counts, he was also found guilty on 3 of 8 counts, namely count 3: Securities Fraud, count 6: Securities Fraud, and count 8: Conspiracy to Commit Securities Fraud.
As a result, as Bloomberg writes, Shkreli – once dubbed “the most hated man in America” – is now a convicted felon.
Absent some miracle, Shkreli is now almost certain to go to prison, where he faces as much as 20 years behind bars, although he’s likely to serve much less. It remains to be seen whether the judge in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, allows him to return home, where he’s spent hours each day on social media, or ships him off to jail right away to await sentencing later this year.
As Bloomberg adds, In the end, it was Shkreli’s lies to his investors that cost him his freedom, not his 2015 decision to jack up the price of an anti-parasitic drug. Prosecutors said Shkreli, 34, misled clients about the performance of his failing hedge funds, secretly used their money to start Retrophin, and then took $11 million from the drug-development company to repay them.
And to think there was an easier way out…
If he had worked at a bank, I'm sure he could have neither admitted nor denied guilt and paid a fine with shareholder money. — Jonathan Tepper (@jtepper2) August 4, 2017
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Aug 4, 2017.
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