Live data from Hacker News

Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

washingtonpost.com

141–150 of 633 posts

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#141
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube video of him doing an Ebay Analysis [1] was very interesting I thought, both from a technical point of view and another look at his character. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSf5YhYQbw

Watching Excel power users is really fascinating.

Yeah, I think he's better at excel than I've ever been at anything. Jesus.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

> 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. Screwing insurance companies means increased costs for everyone . I'd really rather not pay 20% higher premiums every year to pad someone like Shkreli's pocketbook.

Sure, but the solution is not to wish that people like Shkreli don't raise prices on their drugs. Instead, we need to reform the US healthcare system to stop problems like this.

Many drugs of similar kind, as Shkreli would point out, have a similar price. The difference is that those drugs are owned by faceless pharmaceutical companies with PR teams. Shkreli was an obnoxious person who was doing an obnoxious thing and as a result the government swatted him with some unrelated charges (Incidentally, I thought his defense of "I didn't commit fraud, because all investors made money" was a pretty good defense).

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#143
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, everybody came out okay - Shkreli really made his investors a lot of money! Yeah, he lied, but he did some incredible work: typical fraudsters take your money and run - he doesn't fit that mold. Honestly, the issue was that he's an utter asshole, including to his investors. Investors are willing to put with a lot if you triple their money, but Shkreli managed to cross that line. That made him an easy target f…

Just because his investors made money doesn't excuse him. Suppose you lent 10,000 to a friend and the friend promised to return it within a year. A year later, your friend doesn't pay you back and makes a bunch of excuses. Instead, he takes the 5,000 he has left to the casino, gambles it on the roulette wheel and by luck manages to turn that into 30,000 and pays you back 1.5 years later. I don't think you would be ha…

Honestly, I would be thrilled to triple my money in 18 months. Using the gambling analogy is disingenuous though.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#144
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, everybody came out okay - Shkreli really made his investors a lot of money! Yeah, he lied, but he did some incredible work: typical fraudsters take your money and run - he doesn't fit that mold. Honestly, the issue was that he's an utter asshole, including to his investors. Investors are willing to put with a lot if you triple their money, but Shkreli managed to cross that line. That made him an easy target f…

Just because his investors made money doesn't excuse him. Suppose you lent 10,000 to a friend and the friend promised to return it within a year. A year later, your friend doesn't pay you back and makes a bunch of excuses. Instead, he takes the 5,000 he has left to the casino, gambles it on the roulette wheel and by luck manages to turn that into 30,000 and pays you back 1.5 years later. I don't think you would be ha…

What if he lied to you, but then went out and through a combination of talent, hard work, and luck somehow made the money to make you whole and then some?

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#145
post #74
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prosecutors argued that Shkreli lied to investors in two hedge funds and the pharmaceutical company Retrophin, all of which he founded. Shkreli told investors he graduated from Columbia University, that his hedge fund was large and profitable, and that he had hired an auditor, they said. These were all lies, according to prosecutors. yeah seems like a great dude...

I mean, everybody came out okay - Shkreli really made his investors a lot of money! Yeah, he lied, but he did some incredible work: typical fraudsters take your money and run - he doesn't fit that mold. Honestly, the issue was that he's an utter asshole, including to his investors. Investors are willing to put with a lot if you triple their money, but Shkreli managed to cross that line. That made him an easy target f…

He started his career as a short seller that defrauded banks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli#MSMB_Capital_Ma...

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that he hurt a lot of sick people by making it very difficult or impossible for them to afford the hundreds of percent price increases he laid upon the drugs he took control over. Edit: [0] "... it says that the drug is available for free to people with deep financial need. But Dr. Aberg has watched her patients have to "jump through the hoops" to get it. Patients have to prove both financial need and…

And this comment is the reason why Trump was elected president; that we believe everything we hear without doing our own due diligence.

> that we believe everything we hear

So if I see lots of stories by doctors who had difficulty getting their patients the drug even with this program making it available for "free" I should assume all the doctors are making that up?

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#147
post #118

There seems to be a misconception regarding what Shkreli was found guilty of. The legal case here has very little to do with the pharmaceutical pricing controversy - it is a separate case based on a separate hedge fund that he managed. The gist of it is that he took people's money to start a hedge fund, lied to investors that the fund was doing fine when the hedge fund went belly up, but ended up returning everyone's…

Well, that's true, but the article seems to suggest that his brash persona/public conduct made it hard for him to win the case.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#148
I've found him to be an interesting character, a potent symbol of the greed, arrogance, and indifference of the pharmaceutical industry. A PR firm couldn't have invented a better villain, young, brash, flouting decorum by his openly fleecing the public. He was the perfect scapegoat.

I think we all know nothing has changed, and his conviction today has no relationship to his role as CEO, but I wonder if public opinion of the industry will improve, as if the bad apple is rooted out.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#149
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that he hurt a lot of sick people by making it very difficult or impossible for them to afford the hundreds of percent price increases he laid upon the drugs he took control over. Edit: [0] "... it says that the drug is available for free to people with deep financial need. But Dr. Aberg has watched her patients have to "jump through the hoops" to get it. Patients have to prove both financial need and…

Are there any actual cases of people saying they can't afford the drug any more?

I've read plenty of reports over the last year of people who had great difficulty getting the drug, even though it was supposedly free. I posted one such article elsewhere in this thread.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because his investors made money doesn't excuse him. Suppose you lent 10,000 to a friend and the friend promised to return it within a year. A year later, your friend doesn't pay you back and makes a bunch of excuses. Instead, he takes the 5,000 he has left to the casino, gambles it on the roulette wheel and by luck manages to turn that into 30,000 and pays you back 1.5 years later. I don't think you would be ha…

What if he lied to you, but then went out and through a combination of talent, hard work, and luck somehow made the money to make you whole and then some?

Then he lied to me, our business concludes, and I testify that he lied to me when asked. Pretty simple.
Post reply on HN