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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

#391
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One banker did. For 30 months. I think Shkreli was obnoxious and crude; the sentencing should've aligned with the crime. But America, so vengeance porn. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top-ban...

He was also obnoxious and crude in a manner that made it near impossible for the judge to be generous in mitigating his sentence with regards to acceptance of responsibility. He couldn't even wait for an hour after being convicted before going on YouTube and bragging about how he thought he wouldn't face any prison time: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/martin-shkrelis-lawyers-fa...

[deleted]

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

#392
post #5

He was so obnoxious that I guess it is easy to be happy about that, but he was so small time in the grand scheme of things. But nearly no bankers responsible for the 2008 financial crisis ever went to jail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/how-wal...

> But nearly no bankers responsible for the 2008 financial crisis ever went to jail That is a myth. Dozens of bankers were arrested and put in prison over crimes related to the 2008 financial crisis. That includes a number of bankers at large enterprises. It excludes the very top tier bankers, at the systemically important financial firms, who all managed to skate. It's not illegal, generally speaking, to make dumb i…

I'm no expert on the financial crisis, most of my knowledge comes from The Big Short. But wasn't there actual fraud also being perpetrated? E.g. the ratings agencies that knowingly assigned A grades to bundles of decidedly low-grade debt just to keep clients happy?

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

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This man is not an entrepreneur, and to try and say so is to insult and demean actual entrepreneurs everywhere. His investors got lucky that he had the funds to repay them due to his other company. Had he gotten away with this, he likely would have done it again, and those investors might not have been so lucky.

You can talk after you take a biotech company public.

no, we can talk about the fact that using fraud to fund legitimate activity isn't entrepreneurship, now.

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

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fraud" can be civil fraud, or criminal fraud. Criminal fraud is something like "they said they were going to sell me something, but just took my money instead." Civil fraud might be something like "they sold me 10-inch sandwiches as 12-inch sandwiches." What you're describing in the paragraph above is even one step removed from the sandwiches. Knowing that "loans had material underwriting and compliance defects" doe…

OK now do SarbOx. Let's use Jamie Dimon as our example.

I assume you're talking about this: https://www.salon.com/2013/12/18/jamie_dimons_perp_walk_why_....

The article is garbage.

The author's theory is that Dimon is liable under SOX Section 906, because he certified that JP Morgan has "adequate internal controls" under SOX Section 404, but admitted that their controls need some work a month later.

But Section 404 is addressed to "internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting." I.e. do you have controls in place to address the Enron-style situation of people using creative accounting to cook the books. What Dimon was talking about, in the context of the London Whale, were risk management controls. The author tries to lump them together, but the statute clearly addresses accounting controls, not risk management controls. See 15 U.S.C. 7262(a). There's lots of different kinds of "controls" in a company. E.g. there are controls to make sure employees don't pay bribes in foreign countries so as to expose the company to FCPA liability. SOX only addresses controls in connection with financial reporting.

Even if you got past that hurdle, the article is wrong to suggest that you could bring a SOX 906 prosecution for violation of a SOX 404 requirement.

SOX 906 states:

> The statement required under subsection (a) shall certify that the periodic report containing the financial statements fully complies with the requirements of section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U.S.C. 78m or 78o(d)) and that information contained in the periodic report fairly presents, in all material respects, the financial condition and results of operations of the issuer. That's the result of the Enron debacle, where the company and its auditors were misrepresenting the financial status of the company (revenues, liabilities, etc.).

Securities Exchange Act Sections 13(a) or 15(d) don't say anything about adequate internal controls. That's part of SOX Section 404. By the plain terms of the statute, Section 906 liability doesn't attach to misrepresentations directed to Section 404 requirements.

There is a separate certification provision that covers the Section 404 requirements, SOX Section 302.[1] But to bring a criminal action for violation of the Section 302 certification, you have to get a little creative, applying the other securities criminal statutes: http://dodd-frank.com/u-s-brings-criminal-charges-for-false-....

The problem is, those other criminal statutes are directed to protecting people who own or are considering buying JP Morgan stock, not people who bought financial products from JP Morgan. They're designed to prevent Dimon from misrepresenting JP Morgan's financial health to JP Morgan's investors, not to prevent JP Morgan employees from lying to transactional counterparties.

[1] https://www.mofo.com/resources/publications/sec-requires-ceo...

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

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they can't go after everyone doesn't mean that they should punish Shkreli extra hard for what amounts to being a jerk.

It does actually. If you waste their time by trolling them and drawing excessive attention, it consumes their resources responding to comments from the media. Instead of y'know, performing their investigatory/judicial functions.

Parent said should. This is not how law works, so it’s not how its enforcement should work.

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is actually following him as you describe. Most of people that side with him do so because they are amazed at the unfounded witch hunt that he received and at the amount of people who demonize him 95% because of the Daraprim drama and 5% for his actual conviction. And of that 5% - 0.5% might have an idea of what they are talking about. See his videos. You wouldn't stand a chance debating him unless you were a…

>See his videos. You wouldn't stand a chance debating him unless you were a lawyer or pharmaceutical exec. I have. He's seemingly a intelligent guy with some personality issues that have gotten him into trouble. I hope he takes time during his sentence to seek help because he seemingly has more to offer the world than trolling and unethical professional behavior. Beside that, I don't care about Shkreli himself or the…

> I have. He's seemingly a intelligent guy with some personality issues that have gotten him into trouble. I hope he takes time during his sentence to seek help because he seemingly has more to offer the world than trolling and unethical professional behavior.

Good point. Let's leave it at that because him helping the world is all that really matters.

Wouldn't you agree that his childish behavior is a response to the unfair reporting he received? Some people can actually see through that behavior and find more about the truth[1][2]. Would you like to receive thousands of calls every day? death threats? being told that you are are responsible for killing children in Africa? You see that he's smart and mature yet you focus on his OBVIOUS childish acting.

Yeah. A little hand waving is fine by me.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLP-2jD1eH0

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2018/03/09/you-ha...

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

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gosh I wonder if a replacement was made for Daraprim.. >Imprimis Pharmaceuticals, a specialty pharmaceutical company that creates compounded drugs, released a $1 a pill alternative to , a toxoplasmosis treatment whose price skyrocketed by over 5,000% in recent months. >While the new pill is a boon for patients in need of treatment for the food-borne illness, especially those with weak immune systems like HIV/AIDS and…

He wasn't charged for raising the price of daraprim. That wasn't illegal. Defrauding investors is illegal. I highly doubt the case will be overturned.

Would you like to bet on it? I've got $100 that says his sentence will be reduced by at least 50%.

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

#398
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Same thing. Both voluntary business transactions subject to the same rules as any other voluntarily exchange. No one is obligated to sell any particular good or service for any particular price. I know a lot of people see this differently but I don't think they have an ethical leg to stand on. When it gets down to it they have no particular rule for fair pricing other than "that feels too high to me."

And yet, Harry, if you had bothered to read the link in my comment, you'd discover that there are laws against price gouging. Fair pricing can be tricky to determine. However, in Shkreli's case, his entire strategy was to take drugs where a fair price had already been determined by the market and then take advantage of supply constraints to raise the price drastically, by 20-50x. If you really can't tell the ethical…

And yet, William, if you had bothered to read the link in your comment, you'd discover in the "Opposition to laws against price gouging" section that there are numerous people who think these laws are bad and that they make some pretty good points.

In the case of Shkreli and Daraprim the price change induced Imprimis to bring a new drug online which added strength and diversity to the marketplace which is what we expect to happen in a well functioning marketplace when parties work to maximize their own self interest.

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

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> In other words, getting rich from increasing the amount of misery in this world. This is the fallacy. He didn't get rich from increasing the amount of misery in the world . He didn't give people toxoplasmosis. He got rich from not doing something he could do ( i.e. sell drugs more cheaply) to decrease the amount of misery. Which is the exact same thing you do when you buy a Macbook Pro instead of donating the money…

The arugment is that if Shrkeli hadn't involved himself in Retrophin, it would have continued selling the drug at the same price.
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