Internet’s Most Hated Man Out On $5 Million Bail

Update, December 18: Infamous hedge fund and pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli is out of jail on $5 million bail. The New York Times reports that after the failure of attempts to crowdfund the money needed, Shkreli’s father and brother secured his bail. Shkreli, who was arrested Thursday, has been charged with securities fraud, and is accused of running multiple businesses like a Ponzi scheme. Among the allegations are allegations that he drastically misrepresented his business’s performance to potential investors in order to secure funds, claiming he had millions of dollars in assets when he actually had less than a thousand. Also being accused is his corporate lawyer, Evan Greebel.

Update: An effort to crowdsource a bail fund for Martin Shkreli is not doing very well. A GiveForward page called “Bail Out Martin Shkreli” has raised all of a whopping $5. The page’s comments are mostly messages to the single donor, offering to pay her to take back her money. One comment reads, “I will give you $20 to take your $5 back!” The description of the fundraiser reads, “Free an innocent man.” There’s nothing on the page to indicate it’s other than fully sincere, but Shkreli probably doesn’t need the $3,000 that the fundraiser is trying to collect. In 2014, he spent $2 million on the lone copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album, and estimates of his net worth are in the nine-figure range. He’s probably not hurting for that $5.

Original story below.

Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical executive who rose to infamy earlier this year for raising the cost of a lifesaving drug, has been arrested for securities fraud. According to NBC News, FBI agents arrested Shkreli outside his New York City home early on Thursday morning. He’s accused of defrauding a biopharmaceutical company that he ran until 2014, by using assets from that company, Retrophin, to pay off debts to his hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management. Both companies are now closed. Shkreli is currently the head of another pharmaceutical company, Turing Pharmaceuticals. Shkreli made the news earlier this year when his company acquired the rights to Daraprim, a drug that treats a type of parasitic infection common in patients with HIV. Shkreli raised the price of the lifesaving drug by nearly 5,000%, from $13.50 a pill to $750. The price increase prompted backlash and public criticism, with some calling Shkreli "The Most Hated Man in America." Though the charges against Shkreli are unrelated to the Daraprim price hike, many are seeing the arrest as his comeuppance for his display of corporate greed at the cost of human suffering.