{"id":191879,"date":"2017-07-31T18:48:29","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T18:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/jurors-in-fraud-trial-of-pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-begin-deliberations\/"},"modified":"2017-07-31T18:48:29","modified_gmt":"2017-07-31T18:48:29","slug":"jurors-in-fraud-trial-of-pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-begin-deliberations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/jurors-in-fraud-trial-of-pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-begin-deliberations\/","title":{"rendered":"Jurors in fraud trial of &#8216;Pharma Bro&#8217; Martin Shkreli begin deliberations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A jury began deliberations Monday at the federal securities fraud trial of Martin Shkreli, the former biotech CEO best known for hiking up the price of a life-saving drug and for trolling his critics on social media.<\/p>\n<p>The deliberations follow about a month of testimony in federal court in Brooklyn, most it from investors in two failed hedge funds run by the defendant. The witnesses told jurors that the 34-year-old Shkreli concealed the fact that he lost millions of dollars and made them the victim of a scheme to pay them back with worthless stock in a startup drug company.<\/p>\n<p>The trial &#8220;has exposed Martin Shkreli for who he really is \u2014 a con man who stole millions,&#8221; a federal prosecutor, Jacquelyn Kasulis, said in closing arguments last week.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Drug firm CEO Martin Shkreli could lose $65M stake in company if convicted of securities fraud<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8216;Pharma Bro&#8217; Shkreli was shady \u2014 and profitable, investors testify<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The defence countered by arguing that the investors weren&#8217;t victims because they ended up recouping their money when the drug company went public. Some even made large profits when the stock price took off.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Who lost anything? Nobody,&#8221; defence attorney Ben Brafman said in his closing argument. Some investors had to admit on the witness stand that partnering with Shkreli was &#8220;the greatest investment I&#8217;ve ever made,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>Before his arrest in 2015 in the securities fraud case, Shkreli became notorious for purchasing the rights to a drug called Daraprim and promptly raising the price by 5,000 per cent, from $13.50 to $750 per pill. The defendant, who didn&#8217;t testify, also came into the trial with a reputation for trolling his critics on social media to a degree that got him kicked off Twitter and earned him the moniker &#8220;Pharma Bro.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rather than lay low like his lawyers wanted, Shkreli got into the act, using Facebook to bash prosecutors and news organizations covering his case. In one recent post, he wrote, &#8220;My case is a silly witch hunt perpetrated by self-serving prosecutors. &#8230; Drain the swamp. Drain the sewer that is the (Department of Justice).&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Judge tells &#8216;Pharma Bro&#8217; Martin Shkreli to pipe down<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Martin Shkreli reported too-good-to-be-true returns, investor tells trial<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A jury began deliberations Monday at the federal securities fraud trial of Martin Shkreli, the former biotech CEO best known for hiking up the price of a life-saving drug and for trolling his critics on social media. The deliberations follow about a month of testimony in federal court in Brooklyn, most it from investors in <a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/jurors-in-fraud-trial-of-pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-begin-deliberations\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}