He “engaged in multiple schemes to ensnare investors through a web of lies and deceit”, said U.S. Attorney Robert L. Capers.
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Ron Tilles, chair of Turing’s board, will be the privately held company’s interim CEO.
Martin Shkreli, was arrested on Thursday for securities fraud charges which he denied.
Turing caused a national furor this summer when it bought a lifesaving drug, Daraprim, and raised the price by about 5,000 percent overnight.
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”. A second defendant, Evan Greebel of Scarsdale, N.Y., was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The Justice Department says it’s still investigating Shkreli for other possible violations.
Martin Shkreli leaves court in NY. Thirty two year old Shkreli, the ex- hedge fund manager was arrested early in the, morning on Thursday.
He lied to potential investors of MSMB Healthcare about his disastrous dealings in the past, and claimed to have a war chest of $55 million as opposed to the real figure of $6 million.
While most patients’ copayments will be $10 or less a month, insurance companies will be stuck with the bulk of the tab, potentially driving up future treatment and insurance costs. “So if Shkreli’s arrested for securities violations, it’s a comparable justice”. Even when he was asked if he would have done things differently, he simply said, “I probably would have raised the price higher”.
It is said that authorities concerned started investigating Shkreli from early 2014.
Combative, often crass and willfully sophomoric, Shkreli has ” so far ” reveled in being described as a “pharma bro”, the “drug industry’s villain” and far more unprintable terms since his Turing Pharmaceuticals jacked up the price of Daraprim.
Shkreli is also CEO of drugmaker KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc.
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His feed is full of tweets where he defends his actions, boasts about his stock picking prowess (shares of another small biotech called KaloBios surged after he recently took it over) and attacks on his detractors – most notably Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
