Martin Shkreli discusses his controversial decision to raise the price of Daraprim and defends his business practices in the pharmaceutical industry.
Martin Shkreli is a 32-year-old entrepreneur and company builder. A modern day Horatio Alger story, Shkreli grew up the son of two janitors in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, hustled his way into the hedge fund game, and is now worth at least $45 million. Although he made his money betting against the pharmaceutical industry, Shkreli switched to running a drug company in 2012.
In August of last year, one of his companies acquired the rights to a drug that treats an infection that effects in people with AIDS and other immunodeficiencies.
Over night, the price per pill rose by more than 5000 percent and Shkreli became the poster child for capitalistic greed.
Shkreli ran with the bad-boy image, flaunting his trollish behaviour in the media, He's not your typical pharma tycoon anyways. Over the past year he's also funded an indie record label, claimed he would bail Bobby Shmurda out of jail, and purchased the singular copy of a legendary Wu-Tang Clan album … with no immediate plans to even play it.
In December, Shkreli was indicted on securities fraud charges and is now under investigation by Congress and the Federal Trade Commission for price gouging… so his time in the spotlight is not over yet.
VICE caught up with him at his midtown apartment to meet the man behind the headlines.
READ MORE: Everything I Know About the Wu-Tang Album from Hanging Out with Martin Shkreli - bit.ly/1NFBt8p
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What people say. Linked to provide context on Martin Shkreli's perspective and the broader practices of pharmaceutical drug pricing.
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On “Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud”
I use to hate this guy, then I saw the Vice interview on him. It was nice to see his side of the story. I don't know much about this case in particular. It was kinda sleazy to see the congress question him about his price increases when they knew damn well it was perfectly legal and they haven't done anything to stop it. Shkreli seems to be trying to expose this hypocrisy, but the news loves their stories. Vice interview: link to this video
On “Startups that demoed at Y Combinator W16 Demo Day 2”
…me geeks could try getting funding, buy up some underappreciated, undervalued but already FDA approved drugs, and using the cashflow to do further research, or develop cool new products or services in the healthcare space instead of the traditional, risky route. (I'm not advocating jacking up the prices of critical lifesaving drugs obviously). 1link to this video2link…
On “DOJ: We Want Martin Shkreli’s Enigma Machine, Wu-Tang Album, and $7.3M”
Whatever he is going to be convicted of, they're going to throw the book at him. He's a terrible person and an opportunist. The problem is he is not the only one like this. In an interview with Vice he goes over the fact that what he did is common practice0. Until there is some way to stop this price gauging there will be more people like him. 0 - link to this video
On “Federal judges or their brokers traded stocks of litigants during cases”
…08 for armed robbery. Essentially, a new fluff case was used to dole out an improportionate sentence. as retribution for the murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. 4,5 The truth is that Shrkeli pissed off a lot of people in powerful places. None of the investors wanted him tried because he ended up making them all a lot of money. 1link2link to this video3link4link5link…
