Oh, the irony.
Martin Shkreli–yes the same guy who planned to bail out Bobby Schmurda yesterday–was arrested yesterday on securities fraud charges.
In case you’ve somehow missed who Martin Shkreli is, here is a very brief recap.
A pharmaceutical CEO, Shkreli’s company Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, bought the life saving AIDS and Cancer drug Daraprim, then raised the price from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill. Before that he started Retrophin Pharmaceuticals, where he got his start “flipping” (buying the rights to older drugs and then raising the price) pharmaceuticals. He was kicked out of Retrophin, allegedly for the misuse of company funds. He is currently the chief executive of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals where he is yet again under scrutiny as the company is licensing the rights to a drug that treats Chagas disease. According to the NY Times, “KaloBios hopes to win approval for the drug in the United States and sell it for around $60,000 to $100,000 for a course of treatment. In Latin America, the drug costs $50 to $100.”
However, you most likely know him as the guy bought the only copy of Wu Tang Clan’s Once Upon A Time In Shoalin album for a reported $2 million. Then, much to the disappointment of die-hard Wu fans confessed that he hasn’t even listened to it yet. Public outage was so bad that RZA made a public statement assuring his fans that they had no idea of Shkreli’s business practices when the sale was made, and after finding out decided to donate a portion of the proceeds to charity.
Shkreli was in the headlines yesterday as well after he revealed in an unsettling interview with HipHopDX, his plans for trying to bail out Bobby Shmurda, referring to him as “New York’s best chance for rap since 50 Cent.”
That brings us to today, where according to Bloomberg Business, federal agents showed up to Shkreli’s Manhattan home charging him not with price gouging life saving medication, (immoral, but not illegal) but rather for his involvement in a “complicated shell game after his defunct hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management, lost millions. He is alleged to have made secret payoffs and set up sham consulting arrangements.”