Bethany Mclean: Everything You Know About Martin Shkreli Is Wrong—or Is It?
In one breath, he calls himself a capitalist and in the next an altruist—the latter because, he claims, his real goal is to invent new drugs for rare diseases. Turing recently announced discounts of Daraprim for hospitals, and Shkreli says that for people without insurance it will cost only $1 a pill. For everyone else, insurance, which he argues is paid for by corporate America’s profits, will cover the cost. “I’m like Robin Hood,” he continues. “I’m taking Walmart’s money and doing research for diseases no one cares about.”
.. In the summer of 2007, the fund tanked when Shkreli made a $2.6 million bet, through Lehman Brothers, that the market would decline. When he was wrong, he refused to pay Lehman, instead making “veiled threats of filing a bankruptcy,” according to a lawsuit. But it was Lehman which went down in flames, during the 2008 meltdown, and although the court found in its favor, the verdict was vacated... On May 29, he tweeted, without explanation, that “this is one of the best days of my life!” The next day he sold almost $4.5 million worth of his own stock in the company. This infuriated investors who believed he was cashing out... According to an affidavit filed by Pierotti and referenced in the Retrophin lawsuit, Shkreli began harassing his family, including writing his wife a letter that said, “I hope to see you and your four children homeless and will do whatever I can to assure this,”.. “Mr. Shkreli advised me that he hasn’t talked to Mr. Pierotti in over a year so how could he be harassing him,” wrote the officer in a report detailing the incident. “I suggested to Mr. Shkreli that he listen to what I was advising him of and not try to make denials based on word semantics …. Mr. Shkreli then hung up.”.. If there’s a bright spot for those who think Shkreli’s actions are unconscionable, it’s that the attention paid to the Daraprim price increase may spell an end to the whole practice. “He basically ruined the concept for other companies,” one biotech banker says.