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Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

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Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My initial perception of Shkreli was the commonly accepted one of revulsion and hatred. After watching the Vice piece, plus a lot of Shkreli's finance talks and live streams, I find him pretty charming and unbelievably intelligent.

The outrageous price increases directly led to people dying because they couldn't afford life-saving medication. There's no redeeming yourself from that just because you're charming or intelligent. Psychopaths often are.

No it didn't. Provide a source to one person dying from the price hike. His company literally provides it for free if someone can't afford it.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#62
post #5

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 inter…

I agree. My initial perception of Shkreli was the commonly accepted one of revulsion and hatred. After watching the Vice piece, plus a lot of Shkreli's finance talks and live streams, I find him pretty charming and unbelievably intelligent.

These are words you'd use to describe any successful con man.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My initial perception of Shkreli was the commonly accepted one of revulsion and hatred. After watching the Vice piece, plus a lot of Shkreli's finance talks and live streams, I find him pretty charming and unbelievably intelligent.

The outrageous price increases directly led to people dying because they couldn't afford life-saving medication. There's no redeeming yourself from that just because you're charming or intelligent. Psychopaths often are.

I would like to know more about this if you have sources, I have been following Martin Shkreli on a lot of social media for a while and by his explanations, there shouldn't be any person hurt as result of the price hike that he is famous for.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#64
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, his fraud seems to fall into two categories. Lying about his fund's bonafides and status on one side, and working hard to make sure those same investors got what they were expecting by founding a company, making it successful and paying them out from the profits. It sounds like he definitely lied to investors, but he apparently didn't intend to steal their money, and took pains to make sure he did not…

Are you kidding? He's human garbage, let him rot. It's astounding how people are being taken in by this con man.

Okay, I'll bite. Why do you think he's human garbage? You felt strongly enough to reply, maybe you can muster the effort to explain why you think that?

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#65
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the quote itself says "according to prosecutors" so this is only one side of the story.

Well, 12 jurors agreed.

They agreed he committed a crime not that he wasn't a "great dude." I'm not saying he is, just that this is using a claim without any evidence or response to paint a picture of his whole life.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My initial perception of Shkreli was the commonly accepted one of revulsion and hatred. After watching the Vice piece, plus a lot of Shkreli's finance talks and live streams, I find him pretty charming and unbelievably intelligent.

The outrageous price increases directly led to people dying because they couldn't afford life-saving medication. There's no redeeming yourself from that just because you're charming or intelligent. Psychopaths often are.

FWIW, he claims that he gave the medicine away for free to people who could prove they couldn't afford it, so that he was really only screwing insurance companies. I believe that he was trying to draw media attention to the outrageous, legally-allowed colluding practices of the insurance and pharma industries. It would have been in his best interest to not draw attention to himself and slowly raise the price of the drug over time rather than rock the boat and put himself in the spotlight. I think this agitated a lot of the established powers in the pharma industry, but we're getting into tin hat territory now, so I'll leave it at that.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#67
post #4

I understand that what he did was morally abhorrent, but I don't understand why it was illegal? Maybe a lawyer can give a quick summaray?

What was morally abhorrent? Raising prices to insurers to perhaps fund other stuff, while giving away medicines to people that had no way of obtaining it (no insurance)?

If anything he should be lauded for proving how broken the medical system is (why could he so easily buy a monopoly on this product?), while not killing anyone.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#69
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the quote itself says "according to prosecutors" so this is only one side of the story.

Well, 12 jurors agreed.

They mostly didn't agree with the prosecution. He's been convicted on only 3 of the 8 counts.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no clue what this court case was about, do you?

The court case doesn't have to be about that for the argument to still hold true.

1. The OP has nothing to do with the price hikes, so your argument might have been true if it was actually addressing a relevant topic

2. It's even arguable that his price hikes hurt anyone other than already rich insurance monopolies. The insurance companies would have had to cover the prices, and any people without insurance could have received the drug for free from their company. And of course the higher profits went into upgrading the drug.

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