Hated Drug CEO Martin Shkreli Arrested for Fraud

Executive became infamous when he raised price of HIV pill from $13.50 to $750 apiece; FBI says it didn’t seize his $2 million Wu-Tang Clan album

Martin-Shkreli
MSNBC

Martin Shkreli, a drug executive who infamously raised the price of an HIV drug from $13.50 to $750 per pill, was arrested Thursday morning on fraud charges.

According to the New York Times, he has been charged with securities fraud related to his time as a hedge fund manager and as head of the biopharmaceutical company Retrophin. The controversy around the price hike of HIV drug Daraprim doesn’t appear to have factored in the arrest.

Shkreli was arrested in midtown Manhattan. Evan L. Greebel, a lawyer at Kaye Scholer who had worked with Mr. Shkreli, was also arrested.

In 2011, Shkreli founded Retrophin which acquired old, neglected drugs with the intent of raising their prices substantially. The New York Times reported that Retrophin raised the price for Thiola, a pill used to treat a disease that causes kidney stones, from $1.50 to $30 a pill.

Earlier this month,  Shkreli bought a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album titled “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.”

While it’s not known exactly how much Shkreli paid for the album, Bloomberg reported that he shelled out $2 million for the privilege of owning the only copy of the album that will ever be produced.

On Thursday, the New York office of the FBI also tweeted that during its arrest of Shkreli the agency didn’t execute a seizure warrant, adding, “which means we didn’t seize the Wu-Tang Clan album.”

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