Shkreli Charged With Fraud Allegations

Shkreli Charged with Security Fraud and Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud After Raising Prices For Common Medicine Used for HIV Treatment and Parasitic Infections

Martin Shkreli has been arrested with charges of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracies to commit wire fraud.  Shkreli has been under recent scrutiny after drastically raising the price of Daraprim, a life-saving medicine that helps with the prevention of toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that affects young children, pregnant women and HIV positive patients.

Toxoplasmosis occurs after eating under-cooked meat and drinking contaminated water.  It affects those who have weakened immune symptoms such as cancer and HIV patients.

Shkreli bumped the price of Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill.

Due to Daraprim’s relatively small market there hasn’t been a generic form of the drug.

In the first interview since Shkreli was charged for allegedly misleading investors in Shkreli ‘s hedge funds and raiding a public company to cover the losses, according to Mr. Shkreli, Shkreli had been targeted by authorities for a much-criticized drug-price hikes and over-the-top public persona.

Shkreli’s recent price jump of Daraprim isn’t related to his arrest.

Shkreli received intense public backlash after his recent skyrocket price jump.

In an interview at the Forbes Healthcare summit, Shkreli defended the actions saying, “No one wants to say it, no one’s proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system and capitalist rules.”

On Shkreli’s twitter, Shkreli continued to fight back critics insisting that the price increase was to fund medical research.

The Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office, which filed the charges against Mr. Shkreli, didn’t respond to a request for comment. A Federal Bureau of Investigation official earlier said Mr. Shkreli pursued “a securities fraud trifecta of lies, deceit and greed.”

Retrophin recently filed a lawsuit against Shkreli.  Shkreli’s arrest has been speculated to have paralleled this lawsuit.

Shkreli was a former CEO of Retrophin, another company who ventured in purchasing old drug rights then raising the prices heavily.

While Shkreli is unapologetic about the price of Daraprim, Shkreli said, “Most people don’t know the real Martin Shkreli, it would have made more sense to show them before all this.”