Shkreli directing notorious pharma co. from prison. It’s still losing millions

Enlarge / Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing, smirked his way through a Congressional hearing. (credit: CSPAN)

Armed with a contraband phone, an incarcerated Martin Shkreli is plotting a comeback with his notorious pharmaceutical company, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. So far, however, the company is still losing millions of dollars.

Shkreli is just 16 months into a seven-year prison sentence over securities-fraud charges. He landed in jail last year for running what federal prosecutors described as a Ponzi-like scheme that duped investors of his hedge funds. According to prosecutors, the fund siphoned millions from a pharmaceutical company he founded, called Retrophin.

But Ponzi-siphoning isn't what made Shkreli infamous. He gained notoriety in 2015 when another pharmaceutical company he founded, Turing Pharmaceuticals, bought the rights to a decades-old anti-parasitic drug, Daraprim, and abruptly increased its price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill. The rise brought a windfall of profits for Turing, as well as widespread condemnation and increased scrutiny on the pharmaceutical industry's drug-pricing tactics as a whole.

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