After a drawn out week of deliberations, the now infamous “Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli has been found guilty of three out of eight charges heard in a Brooklyn Court.
Of the eight counts, Shkreli was found guilty on one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and two counts of securities fraud. A jury of his peers found him not guilty on five other counts, including charges of wire fraud.
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Professor Robin Feldman, director of the Institute for Innovation Law at University of California Hastings and author of Drug Wars: How Big Pharma Raises Prices and Keeps Generics off the Market, said the outcome could have been much worse for Shkreli.
“The jury did its job and found the glass half-empty. The careful parsing suggests jurors just didn’t buy the prosecution’s case—at least in some respects. I suspect Martin Shkreli and his attorneys are breathing somewhat of a sigh of relief, as many of the counts failed to stick,” Feldman wrote via email.
At the same time, the three guilty verdicts could reportedly still deliver a sentence of up to 20 years in jail, depending on U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto’s evaluation.
“Shkreli is not out of the woods yet. A conviction on three counts is no small matter, and judges take that seriously,” Feldman said. “The process could drag out for some time, however, between sentencing and appeals.”
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Speaking to press after the verdict, Shkreli’s attorney Ben Brafman said he would do everything he could to spare his client jail time, saying it was “not appropriate” in this case. Shkreli stood beside him with his hands in his pocket and a smile on his face, before joining the conversation with reporters.
The 34-year-old rose to fame as the face of corporate greed when his previous company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of the longstanding anti-parasitic drug Daraprim by 5,000 percent. He reveled in the attention and through various mediums online, fueled the public’s ire.
While the Federal charges were unrelated to his price gouging behavior, his personal reputation proved hard to separate from the trial. A long and at times entertaining jury selection process dismissed more than 200 people due to scheduling conflicts or biases against Shkreli before any juror seats were filled.
“To win over a jury, you have to tell a convincing story. What makes sense? What has the ring of truth?” Feldman commented. “The problem for Shkreli’s lawyers is that a story already existed—Martin Shkreli, brash and aggressive, raising drug prices and smirking at Congress. Shkreli’s attorneys managed to set up an opposing story by painting fraud victims as the whining rich.”
Throughout the five-week trial, Shkreli’s case captivated the pharma industry and beyond. On the one hand, he ran what appeared to be a Ponzi-like scheme with his two hedge funds MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare. But ultimately, the investors made out O.K.
“Who lost anything? Nobody,” Brafman said in his closing argument.
On Friday, Shkreli lost. The question now: By how much?
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images