After serving a gentle seven-year sentence in the federal prison for fraud Martin Shkreli has been released and is free to go out into the world again. It's not because of overcrowding COVID, or any alteration in the law to his offense. Instead, he was released after having served 5/7 of his sentence because of federal programs that reduce prison sentences to up to half.
His lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, issued a statement regarding the release. “Martin Shkreli has been released from Allenwood prison and transferred to a BOP halfway house after completing all programs that allowed for his prison sentence to be shortened.” The prisoner will remain in the care of an agency of the federal government located in New York that is designed to aid prisoners in their reintegration into society.
Sure, but who really wants this criminal to return to society? The drug he was selling was Daraprim and soared the cost 40 times over from $17.50 to $450 per pill. This anti-parasitic drug is required for some people to live. Because of his price-cutting the people actually died due to his excessive greed. There is no doubt about it, the man who is unapologetic isn't an investor. He is an insidious crook.
His conviction was made in 2017, after he defrauded investors of two hedge funds he managed and also arranged for investors to defraud Retrophin Inc, where he was the head of the company. In the wake of this verdict in January, a Manhattan judge barred his involvement in the pharmaceutical industry for life. He was also ordered to settle $64.6 million to keep generic versions of Daraprim manufactured by rival manufacturers from being sold on the market. In the following month, the judge in his criminal trial barred him from serving as the director of the chief executive of any publicly traded company.
He also has a $7.36 million forfeiture that is part of his sentence, and to pay for it, the government auctioned off his unique Wu-Tang Clan album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” which cost him $2 million through auction. The album is sought-after by collectors, and the quantity of tracks the album comes with is insane and worth the investment when you have the funds similar to what Shkreli did.
Also known as the “pharma bro” when the announcement of his price-gouging took place, he has not shown any regret for his actions, and at the time of the trial, seemed to believe that he was made of Teflon and that the charges wouldn't be able to stick to him. For him, it turned out that it was simply a cheap, non-stick sludge and the charges held but not as well.
The amount of damage this man caused people who took this medication and people who were unable to be covered by his monopoly, caused many to suffer and even be killed. This was not just greed. Instead, it was a sign of greed that the man didn't care about the wellbeing of the people around him. You had to pay the price or die and he was aware that those are the two only options.
The fraud convictions he was convicted of weren't accompanied by murder charges because the liberal prosecutors were unable to think of a way to put him at the center of the deaths, while ensuring that they would get his money as fraud suspects in the process. They simply wanted to focus on one thing that they believed to be certain. It did not bring justice to those who were victims of his scam and turned those who invested in hedge funds in certain cases. With all the harm the man did it was a shame that he could have even been released from prison but he has escaped and come out of it unscathed.
