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Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison

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Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison

#151

Post by skookumchuck »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #97
sol_remmy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think the outcome should matter. According to the article, "prosecutors had pushed for at least 15 years, saying Shkreli had not shown remorse for his actions" How come the jury is allow to consider his alleged lack of remorse but is not allowed to consider the outcome ? Both are current events

If I push my wife off a cliff for life insurance but she falls onto and kills a terrorist or school shooter does that lessen my crime? Does it even change the nature of my crime? No so it shouldn't enter in.

Judges take into account the "impact" of the crime all the time in sentencing. As they should.

In this case, his crime had no negative impact on anyone, and the unduly harsh sentence sure looks like a sentence for the unlikable (but perfectly legal) price hikes he did.

Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison

#152

Post by Florin_Andrei »

rayiner wrote: post #132
otalp wrote: post #92

It does say something depressing about our laws that he got sent to prison for the thing where he lied to rich people while still making them money rather than the thing where he extorted sick poor people...which is still fully legal even if the majority of society thinks it shouldn't.

Not it doesn’t. Our legal framework doesn’t oblige you to save someone’s life just because you have the means to do so. If it did, we’d all be in big trouble—for the cost of a fully loaded MacBook Pro, you could save someone from malaria in Africa. The fact that people think a particular unpopular thing shouldn’t be legal doesn’t change that. There are a lot of things people believe should be illegal that aren’t ille…

I don't think the outrage was ever about Shkreli not saving someone's life. It was about Shkreli making lots of money from people's suffering, after artificially inflating the price of a drug that he controlled. In other words, getting rich from increasing the amount of misery in this world.

Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison

#153

Post by s73v3r_ »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #68
cdr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do when you also commit fraud with a 7 year sentence.

Remember this when you end up on the wrong side of the law, and the book is thrown at you when it shouldn't be. Easy to cast the first stone. Aaron Swartz was eligible for 50 years in prison and a million dollar fine based on his computer crimes. That's fair too, right? Y'all need some empathy and compassion. People are human, and make mistakes. The punishment should fit the crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron…

Shkreli did not "make a mistake". He purposefully defrauded investors.

Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison

#154

Post by hourislate »

throwaway84742 wrote: post #121
otalp wrote: post #92

It does say something depressing about our laws that he got sent to prison for the thing where he lied to rich people while still making them money rather than the thing where he extorted sick poor people...which is still fully legal even if the majority of society thinks it shouldn't.

He didn’t “extort sick poor people”, he extorted insurance companies. If you couldn’t afford his drugs, he was offering them for free.

I suspect that will be an unpopular fact although true.

He was made an example of by Insurance companies and politicians. You have to remember Shkreli is very connected on Wall St and can call Soros et al friends.

I am of the opinion that the Judge was also biased in this case. She had a disdain for him from the beginning.

Junk away ...LOL....

Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison

#155

Post by Clubber »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #136
Clubber wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to insinuate.

You're claiming that the person who responded to you was distracted by something, but their response didn't indicate that at all.

It wasn't meant to be a personal attack against him, it was more of an observation that the citizenry are now quelled from being (rightfully) pissed about companies cornering a drug and hiking up prices.

Shkrelli is a scapegoat in reagards to the drug price hiking. It's still going on; it's still perfectly legal; and it seems the politicians are getting paid to keep it that way.

It's more of a thought of how the citizenry can get manipulated. Shkrelli was the face of this practice; Shkrelli is in jail; justice served. Or so the narrative seems to be.

Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison

#156

Post by dragonwriter »

dayaz36 wrote: post #122

This is insane. Sentencing guidelines for his crime was 0-12 months. He didn't even lose his investors any money.

> Sentencing guidelines for his crime was 0-12 months.

There's obviously plenty of dispute between where particular situations fall on the guidelines, but his own lawyers argued that he should get 12-18 months (plus other penalties), as a downward deviation from 27 years calculated under the guidelines. [0]

So, I'm curious how you arrived at a guideline sentence of 0-12 months. That would seem to imply Shkreli’s lawyers were grossly incompetent.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crime-shkreli/pharma-...

Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison

#157

Post by danso »

hb3b wrote: post #14

Cruel and unusual given the crime. Half the sentence of Jeffrey Skilling who destroyed thousands of families. No question in my mind that the judge had it out for him from the get-go.

The judge forced him to actively troll people, including goading his large audience into physically harassing a presidential candidate? I don't have a position either which way, but judges can consider whether the defendant shows a measure of responsibility and understanding [0] (e.g. remorse). Shkreli was bragging post-conviction on livestreams [1] and interviews that he wouldn't be spending time in prison. Whether people like Skilling deserved more punishment or not is orthogonal to Shkreli giving the court plenty of room to doubt he had recognized what he had been found guilty of.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_of_responsibility

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/martin-shkrelis-lawyers-fa...

Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison

#158

Post by jjoonathan »

throwaway84742 wrote: post #121
otalp wrote: post #92

It does say something depressing about our laws that he got sent to prison for the thing where he lied to rich people while still making them money rather than the thing where he extorted sick poor people...which is still fully legal even if the majority of society thinks it shouldn't.

He didn’t “extort sick poor people”, he extorted insurance companies. If you couldn’t afford his drugs, he was offering them for free.

Insurance premiums are pricing more and more people out of the market and that trend is driven by this sort of behavior.

I'm glad that Shkreli felt obligated to help the people who could directly attribute their suffering to him, but he's still a jerk who extorts sick people.

Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison

#159

Post by rpearl »

swedish_mafia wrote: post #105

This is a travesty. He is sentenced not for drug prices but for this: he started a hedge fund which lost money, used some of the funds to start a pharma co, the pharma co did well went public and he returned the investors their money at a huge profit for them. Who sufffered? No one. But he misrepresented his funds performance and did not inform them of the pharma co investment. This man is an entrepreneur.

So he lied in order to start the company in the first place and managed to exploit the lie into a profit.

This is still fraud. The fact that it paid off isn't relevant to the fact that it's fraud.

Re: Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison

#160

Post by oh_sigh »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #15
gfosco wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course, but 7 years is a very long time. It could have been shorter, considering the lack of actual damages.

Why do you believe there were no actual damages? Because investors eventually got their money back after years of fraud? (I would also argue the investors in Retrophin lost millions in returns due to Shkreli's paying off MSMB Capital investors, but that is not what he was convicted of)

How much longer than normal were investor funds locked up for?
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