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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

#381
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find one person who got it for free

Patrick Rice gets it free for life after a Reddit AMA. Google not work for you, or were you trying to stonewall the discussion with Rush Limbaugh tactics? http://nypost.com/2016/02/02/i-was-a-victim-of-the-pharma-ja...

There's that one, very public, case. That happened after the entire ordeal blew up, and happened after shkreli had said that people got it for free if they needed it

It's not nothing, but it's not exactly impressive either

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#382
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find one person who got it for free

Patrick Rice gets it free for life after a Reddit AMA. Google not work for you, or were you trying to stonewall the discussion with Rush Limbaugh tactics? http://nypost.com/2016/02/02/i-was-a-victim-of-the-pharma-ja...

[deleted]

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#383
post #309

"It's not always about lying! Sometimes it's about being cruel to strangers just to enjoy their suffering!"

How is that "being cruel to strangers just to enjoy their suffering"? Also, you've commented in this thread about six times now with snarky remarks, unsubstantiated vitriol, and essentially "Martin Shkreli is a monster." Whether or not there's good reason to dislike him, I think you've successfully made your point.

>I think one of the most famous "troll" things he did was buy the master Wu-Tang album and threaten to destroy it so no one could ever hear the album.

How is that not exactly "being cruel to strangers just to enjoy their suffering"?

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#384
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah that's stupid. It might delay your trial but do you really think they would just say "oh ok we won't bother"? Of course not - they'd just go ahead with the least biased jury they could find.

It may take a very long time to find an impartial jury if the Trump impeachment goes to trial.

Impeachments are tried by the Senate. We know where to find them, whether they're impartial or not.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It exposes it. Not quite as monumental, but a Snowden moment. Remember, congress did squat about the price gouging, because that's what they get paid to do.

I wish it were a Snowden moment, but it wasn't. Analogous things are happening all the time - e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/business/questcor-finds-pr... - from $40/botle to $28,000/bottle over a period of 7 years; it has, in fact gone up since, and I can't find the source right now, but in fact Questcor has also cornered the synthetic version and jacked it up as well, so everyone in the US who needs it pays…

I'm a little more hopeful that regard, perhaps misguided. Shkreli is a commonly known name because of his persona and the way the media latched on to it. It was a perfect story. Bad guy, doing bad things to sick people. Hell I even know how to spell his name and he has been in the news for quite a while.

Questcor on the other hand, I've never heard of. Not a very juicy story, and any juiciness is the result of Shkreli. Will it make a difference? There is a lot of money preventing it from making a difference, but it's about to become a political career killer to allow this to go on I believe. At the very least, it's in the public discourse.

Comparatively, Snowden's revelations hasn't really changed squat either. Maybe I shouldn't be so optimistic.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#388
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…

> When fraud happens those affected don't usually get their money back much less a return on that money.

He defrauded and stole money from the investors in the pharma company to repay the people he defrauded and stole money from in the hedge funds. The one set of victims getting a return only happened by stealing returns belonging to the other set of victims.

> However, it's pretty clear what he did is also fraud (false documents, not returning people's money when they asked for it) even if the fact that investors came out better makes the plaintiffs less sympathetic.

Criminal cases have separate prosecution and victims, but not plaintiffs. It's the victims (well, one of two sets of them) that are potentially less sympathetic for the reason you describe.

Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

#389
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…

>When fraud happens those affected don't usually get their money back much less a return on that money. That will be a footnote at sentencing. Federal sentencing is generally based on intended or actual loss, whichever is greater . Further, the judge is allowed to take into account intended losses from his entire course of conduct, not just the intended losses from the specific counts on which he was found guilty. In…

> In other words, the fact that his investors lost no actual money will have little bearing on his sentence

AFAICT, the Retrophin investors lost actual money. The losses came out of gains and reduced them, and they still had net gains from Retrophin, but they lost money to the fraud.

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