No sense giving the defense any more reasons for appeal. Whether the guy is a scumbag or not, whether he has a lot of money or not, the criminal justice system should not be imposing undue burden or punishment based on public opinion regarding a matter that isn't even relevant to the case.
I won't lose any sleep when this guy goes to prison for a long time, but no sense doing nonsense that will only mildly inconvenience him and give potential grounds for appeal.
I don't know any of the specifics of the case and IANAL so I couldn't say. My lay understanding is that this is a pretty straight-forward case and he will see the inside of a jail cell.
Personally, I think that impression (which is popular) is largely because A) white-collar criminals can typically afford better representation than someone e.g. accused of armed robbery; B) we're much more likely to hear about someone who embezzled $30 million getting off with a slap on the wrist than we are to hear about someone who broke into an empty apartment building getting a similarly light sentence.
It depends on the federal prosecutor, convicting high profile criminals is one of the ways they parlay that in to politics.
It's largely a matter of whether the case is winnable. Then if he acts anything like his public persona suggests, I can't see too many prosecutors going easy on him, if he's abrasive or something? It's entirely possible they give him the Schwartz treatment.
> I won't lose any sleep when this guy goes to prison for a long time
What is the point of putting someone like this in prison? He wouldn't pose a threat to others if he were released immediately.
He should be sentenced to spend his time and energy giving back to society.
If you really are concerned about the due process implications, it's worth reading Ken White of Popehat questioning how and why the time/place of the arrest and "perp walk" was leaded to the press.
From Ken:
If Reuters was there through independent investigation, then good for them. But if Reuters was there because of a tip from law enforcement, then I'd like to ask a couple of questions....
Who leaked the time and place of the arrest? Was it an FBI agent, a prosecutor, staff, a coordinating local cop? How high up in the government did the decision to leak the arrest go? Did the leak violate the law? Did it violate the defendant's rights? What was the government's purpose in leaking the time and place of the arrest? How does this instance fit into the pattern of which arrests get leaked and which don't? Which nonviolent defendants without records get arrested, and which get summonsed in (or self-surrender through arrangement with their lawyers), and why? What impact does a font-page picture of a defendant in handcuffs have on the jury pool? Is that impact a feature, or a bug, of leaking it? Was the leak intended to inflict extra-judicial humiliation and punishment on the defendant? If the government lies about whether or not it leaked, would you still keep it secret?
The indictment makes it obvious that this started long before Daraprim was in the news. I'd say this isn't politically motivated, at least not for that reason alone.
The indictment makes it clear he's been under SEC investigation for six years. Meanwhile, his former firm is suing him for stealing shareholder's money.
Both matters pre-date Skreli's national notoriety, because it was his new, post-Retrophin firm that made him "famous" for price gouging.
Can you tell me where it says that? I've been looking for details as to when the investigation started but in the document it just lists all the bad things that have happened in the past.
The alleged crimes would have been investigated under any circumstances. The question is, would the charges be filed if it weren't politically expedient?
That this question even has any legitimacy is troubling in and of itself.
They were investigating him but he was largely unknown outside of some financial and biotech circles. After Daraprim and the subsequent public outrage, not to mention his grating "bro" public persona, he became one of the most hated men in America. They were going to nail him for something as a result of that investigation.
Remember, they got Al Capone in the 1930s for tax evasion - not all the other things he was certainly guilty of. Several other gangsters were convicted of things like mail fraud.
If you're guilty, or even just under investigation, don't paint a target on your back. A smart person would know to lay low. Schkreli ... didn't.
Correct, but who's to say where the investigation would have stopped if they didn't uncover anything at first? If he wasn't so publicly reviled, it may have been dropped if wrongdoing wasn't immediately uncovered. But because he was so out there in public and so publicly reviled, he may have insured that investigators kept looking at him until they did find something they could make stick.
I would note that I have no knowledge of the investigation beyond what's being reported (and only a cursory knowledge of that). I could be totally wrong. Maybe these charges were immediately obvious to investigators and it's just taken them almost a year to get their ducks in a row. I'm just theorizing here based on some historical knowledge of famous criminals and how they were eventually brought down (see my comments above on gangsters in the 20s and 30s).
There was a lawsuit a little while back [August], Retrophin, Inc. v. Shkreli, and reading the complaint it seems to be basically a litany of fraud, so wouldn't be surprised if these charges had a bunch of overlap with the earlier lawsuit -- although I haven't yet read the indictment.
The Retrophin complaint also contains more detail about what happend with Merril Lynch:
24. Shkreli also had to contend with Merrill Lynch, which had sued him and MSMB
Capital in connection with the Orex Trade (the “Merrill Lynch Arbitration”). Shkreli and
MSMB Capital had entered into a settlement agreement with Merrill Lynch that required Shkreli
and MSMB Capital to execute confessions of judgment in favor of Merrill Lynch. The
confessions of judgment would not be filed if Shkreli and MSMB Capital timely paid the agreedupon
settlement amount. Shkreli funded the Merrill Lynch settlement – and avoided the filing of
the confessions of judgment – by causing a $900,000 investment in Retrophin equity securities
made by MSMB Healthcare to be recharacterized as a “loan,” causing the “loan” to be repaid
with interest, and using the “loan” proceeds together with other money taken from Retrophin to
pay Merrill Lynch. See generally ¶¶47-58, infra.
> On or about December 2, 2010, Investor 1 [...] asked SHKRELI in an email
about, inter alia, the fund's assets under management and the names of its independent auditor and fund administrator. SHKRELI told Investor 1 that MSMB Capital had $35 million in assets under management and that the fund's independent auditor and administrator were Rothstein, Kass & Company, P.C. and NAV Consulting Inc., respectively. At the time of this representation, MSMB Capital did not have an independent auditor or administrator, and SHKRELI had lost through trading the approximately $700,000 that had been invested by the four Capital Limited Partners. In fact, as of November 30, 2010, the value of assets in MSMB Capital's bank and brokerage accounts totaled approximately $700.
Actually that is very "easy" to do, first you short sell some stock (naked short) for $1M, then the stocks value goes up by $8M. You are asked to cover your short and even after your $1M you are still left holding $7M in liabilities.
This is incorrect. You can’t talk about absolute $8mill gain without talking about the total market cap (total value) of the stock.
What would have happened that the company its not increase by $8mill but increase by 8 times the current value which is more possible to happen for small cap stocks.
Yes agreed with your example. The total loss in your example is only 16%. In the example provided above he starts with $1mill and has a loss of $7 mill. Thats a 700% loss.
Umm, you know how short sales work right? You're borrowing shares to sell them at current prices and then have to return the shares later. If the price rises, you are out the difference between what you sold at and what you repurchase at for when the call to cover comes in.
From Wikipedia: "Naked short selling, or naked shorting, is the practice of short-selling a tradable asset of any kind without first borrowing the security or ensuring that the security can be borrowed, as is conventionally done in a short sale." It is really easy to lose your shirt with a naked short.
Look at the agreement you sign when opening a brokerage account. You give the brokerage firm the right to loan out any shares of stock you own. I believe this only happens in accounts that have margin (you do have to have a margin account to short), but I am not entirely certain.
Naked shorting doesn't do much to exacerbate the downside of shorting a security. Even if you have borrowed the security, you still have an unlimited downside (i.e. the stock price _can_ go to infinity).
Naked shorting is more of a systemic problem because you can put downward pressure on a stock even when the market is not willing to sell at the price you are pretending to sell at. It also makes it hard to keep track of voting shares and you can see many more votes than actual shares.
This scenario might be called a "short squeeze". If you can't actually borrow the stock which you've located before shorting - then you get "bought in" - and your broker will just buy shares at whatever price is necessary to cover.
Maybe he could launch a GoFundMe like that guy that lost $100K on E*trade shorting stocks. Although either he or GoFundMe at least had the good conscience to delete that campaign...
It just keeps getting better (or worse, depending on if you invested with him)...
In addition to failing to settle a huge short position, he managed to turn $1.12 million into $58,500 in 28 days.
> Contrary to SHKRELI' s representations to Merrill Lynch, MSMB Capital had failed to locate OREX shares to borrow in order to settle MSMB Capital's short sales. As a result, MSMB Capital failed to settle a short position of over 11 million shares of OREX, which Merrill Lynch ultimately closed at a loss of over $7 million. In addition to the losses in the Merrill Lynch account, MSMB Capital suffered over $1 million in other trading losses in approximately February 2011. Based on these trading losses, the value of
assets in MSMB Capital's bank and brokerage accounts, not including the OREX losses at Merrill Lynch, declined from more than $1.12 million on or about January 31, 2011 to $58,500 at the end of February 2011.
Interesting that the crime which was "serious" enough to motivate law enforcement was theft of capital, NOT drug price gouging. It had nothing to do with Daraprim. Of course, Mr. Shkreli's recent popularity in the headlines may have greased the wheels of this investigation a bit.
Update: As has been pointed out, this comes as no surprise since this kind of price gouging is perfectly legal.
The galling thing about the whole drug price gouging story is that it was perfectly legal. That said, I'm not sure we can speak with confidence about law enforcement's motivations.
As it stands, there's no law against price gouging. As morally questionable as his pricing is, there's nothing illegal about it. "Being a dick" isn't a criminal offense. Yet.
Price gouging may be perfectly legal in the drug price context, but it gives cause to re-examine a whole range of implicit assumptions re: how capitalism is allowed (encouraged?) to operate vs how well it delivers benefits to society.
Agree with your point, though patent protection for drugs is a government provided benefit and has little to do with capitalism. The government (us) provides this benefit and we (the people) usually don't get enough in return.
Most of the drugs he was gouging for were already out of patent, but they were low volume and it takes a while to bring a generic to market. During this time, he makes a lot of money.
Price gouging might be bad but the alternative is worse. If you allow the market to set the price of a limited resource, that resource will be allocated to those who truly need it. If you set the price so that "everyone" can afford the resource, you create a shortage and those who truly need the resource might or might not get it depending on how lucky/early they got in line.
Really, you think that $13 per pill was a worse situation? That there was an epidemic of people out there paying $13 a pill for antiprotozoal medications who don't truly need them?
Isn't that obvious? The $13 price point set up the situation for a corporate raider to take over and drastically change the price. If the price point had been higher, the company would have been more valuable and less susceptible to a takeover.
The ones here being happy at this guy being indicted are the ones that defend economic libertarianism later for the sole reason that it allows them to pay less taxes, regardless of what's in the public interest. Disgustingly selfish.
What is the basis for this comment? I'm sure that a lot of people who are "happy at this guy being indicted" are not economic libertarians.
Also, who defends economic libertarianism "for the sole reason that it allows them to pay less taxes, regardless of what's in the public interest"? I know that's a favorite caricature of libertarians that's dear to those who don't agree with libertarianism, but that doesn't mean it's true.
Not that your comment is particularly worth of discussion, but you'd think there would better reasoning behind calling out a broad category of commenters out as being "disgustingly selfish".
The request was invalid from the start and OP probably knows it.
FOIA is not used to obtain information contained in the seized material, but information that arose during the investigation. If for some reason, the information created in the investigation contained the actual recording from the album, then you could at least theoretically ask for that information. If not, then there was no information to ask for in the first place.
What can I ask for under the FOIA?
A FOIA request can be made for any agency record. You can also specify the format in which you wish to receive the records (for example, printed or electronic form). The FOIA does not require agencies to create new records or to conduct research, analyze data, or answer questions when responding to requests.
IIRC, there are two interesting clauses in the purchase contract:
1. It cannot be sold. Given away, yes, but the current owner doesn't seem like someone who will just release the tracks for the world to enjoy for free.
2. It can be stolen back. By Wu-Tang Clan. Or by Bill Murray.
Cynical me has to wonder if this has less to do with stealing and more to do with getting the plebs riled up to the point they start wanting to shine a light on the whole ecosystem. Powerful people in government and industry are... well, not the kind of people who take lightly to having their loot threatened.
Note to self: if you ever take up stealing as a primary business, do it quietly and don't attract attention to your fellows.
Shkreli seemed like such an obvious troll in how he defended his price gouging by saying that a CEO's role is to maximize profit for the benefit of shareholders...and yet did so in such an unnecessarily obnoxious way that if he truly were the uber-capitalist, he would know that bragging and drawing attention to what an asshole you are does not achieve the true capitalist goal. I would've bet money that in a year, he would reveal that his act was just a trolling piece of noble performance art to raise awareness of how evil corporations could be.
I'm holding out hope that getting arrested and indicted is still all part of his greater plan, though if so, it's a bit more elaborate than it needs to be, IMHO :)
So, if not a troll / performance artist, what is he then? Just a very stupid person with a bloated ego? How does someone so stupid make it to CEO of a pharmaceutical company at 32?
He is a sociopath. There are political and corporate leaders who are also sociopaths. But this guy, derived pleasure by showing off his misanthropy under the guise of "Greed is Good".
The performance art hypothesis has not been disproven to my knowledge, but I haven't ever heard of anyone being arrested and indicted by the feds as being part of their plan in life. Are there any such examples?
In short, he was arrested for securities fraud. This isn't related to his price-hiking antics, rather it involves his work running pharmaceutical companies and lying to investors.
My first reaction to his arrest was joy and then I saw comments about him getting "beat up in jail" to put it lightly.
People who say those kinds of things are no better than him. Possibly worse.
The solution to dealing with people like him is to be able to separate them from society or fix the system so it can no longer be exploited so "easily".
He may have hurt a lot of people but it's been through proxy as far as we know. Like Drone strikes, if you can't see the damage you're doing you can't feel guilty about it.
Like Morgan on the Walking Dead. I do believe Martin is a good guy on the wrong path.
It's easy to come together to have shared hatred for this guy and it's hard to realize
I can do better as a human being with empathy towards someone who is broken; sad and probably doesn't understand why people hate him.
He's just being "successful" as it was always defined to him.
Like the Boston Bomber. Getting "Revenge" does not stop the perpetual cycle violence and misbehavior.
The Wolf of Wall Street was a glorification of this type of behavior and a lot of people saw Jordan in that movie as a "Hero"
>>The Wolf of Wall Street was a glorification of this type of behavior and a lot of people saw Jordan in that movie as a "Hero"
Interesting analogy, and I'm glad you pointed this out. I was disgusted by Wolf of Wall Street, and even more disgusted by how exalted Belfort became after. So many friends and acquaintances admired and aspired towards what they saw in the film - that was the worst part of it for me. I just can't relate.
OT but i'm happy to see someone else was also disgusted so much by that movie. I'm not a moralist but the glorification of such degenerated values in that movie was horrible to watch.
The glorification in the movie was there to make this exact point. Be disgusted that people took it as some sort of how-to be successful guide. Don't shoot the messenger.
That's the meaning I actually took from the movie, but I'm still not sure that was the purpose of the authors. A lot of people didn't understand it that way anyway.
Edit: tried to take, because it's still hard to assimilate
It was great inspiration for me to hope that one day I could hope to take a bunch of SSRI drugs and go on a murderous rampage in some random Wall Street hedge fund office!
Loved the movie. Doesn't mean I want to be like him. One of my favorite movies, The Talented Mr Ripley, leaves you feeling unsatisfied about the conclusion-- not a typical Hollywood ending.
Boiler Room is also a favorite, which of course is related to Wolf of Wall Street.
Anyone who got that message from the film is completely oblivious to its point. A similar movie with a more extreme premise would be American Psycho. No one aspired to kill prostitutes after seeing that film, I have no idea why Wolf of Wall Street is different.
I went to a talk by Alan Parker (probably more than 20 years ago). In it he talked about watching a screening of his film Midnight Express. There is a scene in the film where Billy, the main character, bites out the tongue of another man at the end of a fight. He intended the scene to be tragic. It was supposed to show how prison had brought Billy to a place where he had completely lost everything he used to be. But, to Parker's dismay, some of the audience cheered because all they could see was the vengeance that Billy was taking on the other character.
Parker said that he resolved after that not to use violence in a film in that way again.
To go anecdote for anecdote, I have never met anyone who has expressed admiration of or aspiration to what they saw in that film. I think your disgust and inability to relate is the more common view, but maybe I'm just naive.
A lot of people in finance think it's awesome, and generally speaking those guys run in different circles from computer people. Think coke and strippers.
"I do believe Martin is a good guy on the wrong path."
What makes you think he's a good guy? All the evidence points to the contrary, both morally and apparently ethically and legally based on this indictment.
>Like Morgan on the Walking Dead. I do believe Martin is a good guy on the wrong path.
Not sure how you can defend that with this floating around.
I’m definitely the real fucking deal. This
is not a fucking act. I threatened that
fucking guy and his fucking kids because
he fucking took $3 million from me and
he ended up paying me back. He called my
bluff. He said, “You’re not fucking going to
go after me.” [I said] “Yes I motherfucking
will.” I had two guys parked outside of
his house for six months watching his every
fucking move. I can get down. I don’t think
RZA knows that. I think he thinks I’m
some powder puff white guy CEO that’s
got too much money. No. No, no, no.
I don't know, I take that as a nerdy white dude who desperately seeks attention trying to impress the hip hop heads out there (that kind of talk is extremely common in the rap game).
If someone says something and then says "it was a joke", "it was a game", "I was just making a point", that doesn't cancel out the words and their impact - social atmosphere is not an intellectually pristine environment. You will change the atmosphere by yelling "fire" in a crowded theater and once it's done, there is no going back.
Likewise, if we dismiss someone's statement because "it was attention seeking", "they didn't really mean it", "something was misunderstood", "it's just part of the culture", that also doesn't cancel it out.
There are plenty of young, impressionable folks who latch on to ideas unthinkingly because they cannot take anything seriously at their age and level of maturity. But that is not usually the case with a 32-year-old adult like Shkreli, or people in hiphop culture, or people in actual street gangs.
Posturing language exists to make a claim to credibility. It serves a real purpose and is used in an instrumental way, for the purpose of conducting business on the terms of those who use it. The people who exploit this language the best contain in their personality some particular combination of motivation and lack of restraint, enabling their threats to be real to some degree.
Shkreli already displays such a personality among multiple facets. There is no reason to deny him the possibility of simply being a bad human being who is in need of careful monitoring by society.
>>> "You will change the atmosphere by yelling "fire" in a crowded theater and once it's done, there is no going back."
>>> "Posturing language exists to make a claim to credibility. It serves a real purpose and is used in an instrumental way, for the purpose of conducting business on the terms of those who use it."
>>> "enabling their threats to be real to some degree."
>>> "There is no reason to deny him the possibility of simply being a bad human being who is in need of careful monitoring by society."
Do you realize what you're advocating here? Also, referencing "fire in a crowded theater" is usually looked upon as a canary for those who don't know what they're talking about in regards to free speech
Are we really going to have this stupid god damn conversation again? Threatening speech is not protected. Acting like a fucking jackass might be protected speech but it doesn't protect you from the forum of public opinion.
Ironically, pretty much everytime I see someone whining about free speech, they're talking about it non-governmental contexts... the ultimate irony of you telling others they don't know what they're talking about.
If you're a jerk to people and then backpeddle with "it's a joke", you're still a jerk, and you're still not welcome in any space I curate.
edit: And now elsewhere you're calling people unempathic for being upset with him. Dude, he might have been raised by narcissists but at some point you have to take responsibility for how you act.
He's repeatedly done very unstable, aggressive things. If he's not actually slightly sociopathic, he's a huge asshole and I literally can not for the life of me imagine why you'd be vaguely defending him.
we don't jail people for being "slightly sociopathic" "assholes", we jail them for breaking the law. Attempting to construe someone's unrelated speech, even as sociopathic as it may come off, as justification for jailing them (remember, for securities fraud) is terribly dishonest and a very dangerous slippery slope.
Also, by the way, threatening speech is technically protected under the first amendment [1]. Dunno why you brought up the government/public opinion topic.
To address my empathy comment, I think it's in very poor taste to declare someone "sociopathic" (i.e. shades of mentally ill) if you're not a doctor, close friend/family member, or otherwise licensed professional. Doubly so to make such a judgement based off a small sampling of online commentary. We should all strive to be empathetic and employ a principle of charity when making such judgements, especially before we know the facts.
So it's a great thing that the SEC investigation began over a year ago.
>Doubly so to make such a judgement based off a small sampling of online commentary.
Just because you're ignorant about Martin doesn't mean the rest of us are. I just am absolutely aghast at you keeping this up. Just go Google him, read a couple articles and get over it. Stop acting like this is some secret accusation that you don't have the evidence for.
>Dunno why you brought up the government/public opinion topic.
Because "Free speech" has fuck all to do with anything being discussed in this thread? Unless you're really saying that this investigation that began before he was ever in the news is about "silencing" Martin.
Seriously, do you know a single thing about him or his company?
I'm sorry I said he was slightly sociopathic. Let me rephrase "He has, on multiple occasions, acted similarly to how classic sociopaths act". ...... yeah, everyone cool now?
>We should all strive to be empathetic and employ a principle of charity when making such judgements, especially before we know the facts.
And I should empathize with The Westboro Baptist Church and try to "understand" them instead of just investing in efforts that oppose them, eh? I'm tired of this "you have to tolerate intolerance or you're just as bad" and all this other hand-wavey bullshit that is completely pointless. I know everything I need to know to conclude that Martin is a disreputable person that I wouldn't be caught dead with. I think he has a huge ego and treats people very poorly. There are plenty of examples of all of these things.
I don't think I'm following, other than the implication that chipsy is ignorant about free speech. For the sake of discussion, why not spell out your concerns?
FYI, the "fire in a crowded theater" phrase comes from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Schenck v. United States[1]. Writing for the majority (actually it was a unanimous decision), Holmes wrote:
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.
Many people nod their heads at this example, but they forget that Holmes was using it to justify the imprisonment of a man for leafletting against the draft. Those who earnestly reference "fire in a crowded theater" would likely stop if they knew its history. If anything, it argues against their point.
The idea that the history of a phrase or word dictates its meaning is patently absurd. If that were the case, you would be equally appalled by a man calling himself an "ordinary guy"… which comes from Guy Fawkes, a failed 17th century religious terrorist.
I don't think that's the same at all. I gave an example of a unique phrase where people agree with the original sentiment –even the exact words– of Holmes, only to backtrack when they discover what those words were used to justify. Your example is a single word whose various meanings are now completely disconnected from Guy Fawkes or religious extremism.
People have really forgotten that its supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty".
Too many people have faith in the judicial system. I wish they would all have to defend themselves, just once, from an unsubstantiated criminal charge.
They would find out, very quickly, just how scary the system can be.
Him being of albanian background, I wouldn't be suprised if he was connected to underground as well, specially seing him threatening people like this. This is definitely their style.
The guy was brought up in the US. Deducing that he's connected to underground based on his parent's origin is mental. If anything, the hyper-macho behavior is result of American upbringing.
He obviously is somehow obsessed with the Wu-Tang Clan, so I'd guess his life philosophy is a based on a combination of rap gangsters and wall street traders. Both very American. Sorry for oversimplifying.
Albanian is tribal organization and no wonder he would find role models in asian gangs. I can't know but seems likely to me that he picked up a lot of this at home.
While you are correct that hoping he gets beat up in jail isn't right, that does not suddenly mean he's some sort of martyr. We are accountable for our actions and his actions were to buy up drugs that people depend on and then gouge the shit out of them because they have few/no other options. No matter what way you slice it he is not a "good guy".
This is so important. I also believe that this is the central conflict between the disenfranchised and the entitled. Yes, we despise evil, but we do nothing but help create it by turning on those we perceive as bad people the second we're given the go ahead.
"I can do better as a human being with empathy towards someone who is broken; sad and probably doesn't understand why people hate him."
If we ever want to stop hatred, if we ever want to stop violence, if we ever want to fundamentally stop the same alienated people who turn to mass violence as their destructive outlets, we have to do it with empathy.
This article is great, and I post it every time the gun control argument comes up after every mass shooting that comes up:
I agree with you on the jail comments not being appropriate but doing something through proxy doesn't make you less culpable. drone pilots still get ptsd (the ones with a conscience at least). Shkreli isn't a good guy on the wrong path, he's an actual psychopath and while I honestly don't think any non-violent criminals "deserve" the hell that is US prison, if it keeps him from exploiting and harming more people it's a net gain for society and that's what's important.
I'm not sure how incarcerating people deemed to prove a "net social loss" by some nebulous criteria promotes social stability. Hell, if we're going to be this loose, why not just kill them so no resources are spent for prisoner care?
there are people that are good, but either mislead or on the wrong path of some sort. in this case, the person lacks certain part of human-ness called empathy, which you call out; that's a clinical condition called sociopathy. you may notice the irony of invoking empathy on someone who doesn't have it and likely doesn't understand it, having never felt it. high functioning sociopaths can be a very serious danger to any society they're in and you have a great example here.
He doesn't understand why people hate him because he can't step down from his ego trip enough to honestly consider the consequences of his actions. Of all the maligned people in the news deserving of sympathy, an unrepentant Wall Street CEO gloating about profiting by unconscionable means shouldn't rise to consideration.
The reason there's so much antipathy lately toward white-collar criminals is backlash against judges and prosecutors being sympathetic and lenient toward their fellow clean-cut professionals. That antipathy has only manifested in angry protests and op-eds by the powerless, not the prosecutorial and judicial decisions that Shkreli is in the hands of now.
You could say we're all good guys on some kind of path. The typical third-world warlord is 'just being "successful" as it was always defined to him.'
Everyone should get society's best attempt at impartial justice and a compassionate, non-violent, and restorative treatment. But poor folks like Eric Garner are the ones who've been lacking this justice. Shkreli will probably get probation, a fine, and some community service like the handful of executives offered up after the last financial crisis.
Anyone who doesn't periodically reflect on the consequences of their actions is a bad person. Especially in a world in which our actions are increasingly being done "through proxy".
I don't think anyone is comparing the moral code of this guy compared with the moral code of the people who are outraged about him.
Like most businesspeople he probably adopts the ethos of getting away with what he can within the law, and possibly bending the law where he can get away with it. Google's offshore profit laundering system is an example of a similar approach.
I think it's a mistake to believe this guy is all that different from average in his moral behavior. Most of us never get the opportunity to price pharmaceuticals, but chances are most business owners don't simply give away the product to those who want it.
Differentiating between customers wanting and needing a product is a slippery slope.
>I do believe Martin is a good guy on the wrong path.
In the 'even the worst guy in the world is a good guy once you look past what ever issues result in them being evil' way?
>He's just being "successful" as it was always defined to him.
There are SO many ways I could run with this.
Honestly, I think one could try to make the argument that there are no evil people, just broken ones. Is that what you are trying to say? If not, I find it hard to justify this guy as a good guy otherwise.
>My first reaction to his arrest was joy and then I saw comments about him getting "beat up in jail" to put it lightly.
>People who say those kinds of things are no better than him. Possibly worse.
If wishing bad things would happen to someone who has done bad things and actually raising the price of AIDS drugs fiftyfold to get rich are anywhere near each other in your moral calculus, I'm terrified of your moral calculus (especially that it may be common.)
The way I imagine it, rather than getting beaten up, the guy is simply held down and cut once with a razor. The other inmates take turns spitting into his wound and saying, "I wish I could afford the medications that keep my HIV under control. And now you do, too."
But I just imagine that. It's not like I would ever attempt to actually set up such a thing.
Or I imagine that he goes in, and most everyone is kept segregated under extremely high security, with leg shackles and spit masks. He is put into a cell, and his cell mate has a horribly scarred face, but a bright, friendly grin, insomuch as the scars allow it. That night, he wakes up, unable to move, as the razor blade digs into his face. "I used to have that pretty face. Why should you get to keep it?" The next morning, his cell mate is taken away to solitary. A few weeks later, after his wounds heal, he gets a new cell mate. Lo, it's Martin Shkreli! So he flashes a bright, friendly grin as he thinks about his hidden razor blade. Rod Serling narrates us out, talking about the prison where all the other prisoners are copies of you.
We need to imagine prison as a terrible place, where bad people get punished as they rightly deserve, because we need to believe that putting people inside actually somehow serves justice in a useful way.
He won't get beat up in jail because he deserves it, but because he will find no one inside willing to watch his back, and the other inmates will attempt to extort some of that pharma-CEO cash out of him while he is within their reach.
It's not any worse than Dante Alighieri's Inferno, or the mythic punishments for Sisyphus, Tantalus, Prometheus, or Loki. Nor is it as tediously psychological as Sartre's No Exit (Huis Clos).
I assure you, I am well aware of the boundary between fact and fiction. I am actually a bit worried that you find words and imagination to be cause for concern. That fear leads to censorship, which is far worse than any of the fantasy blurbs I have ever written.
My real-life hope for Shkreli is that he will be very, very bored for about three to four years (if convicted), and that all the folks he (allegedly) defrauded are able to get some restitution. He doesn't even need to be beaten with meaty thug fists. He just needs to be kept away from productive workers and other people's money. And maybe also the cocaine.
"In September 2015, Shkreli received widespread criticism when Turing obtained the manufacturing license for Daraprim, and raised its price by 5,500 percent (from $13.50 to $750 per tablet)."
I watched his stream on Twitch about a month ago and he came across as a nice guy. Viewers were asking him for career path, post-secondary education, and bio-tech advice. He was responding to questions politely and seemed to be pretty chill.
From what the media reports on him and what I saw on Twitch, seems as though he may have a bit of a Jekyll-Hyde type personality.
I quit (actually got fired for complaining) from a startup after six weeks, as the boss was late paying us an lied about it. I am still waiting to be paid for three weeks work two month later. He could also come across as quite charming.
Isn't Martin doing exactly what the rest of the pharma industrial complex is doing - extracting money from insurance companies by working the healthcare system? You can't personify the pharma industrial complex, Pfizer doesn't have a human face or name, but Martin does, so we direct our hatred of the complex at him. Am I wrong? Misplaced hatred does nobody any good, and none of the social media commentary I've seen has expressed a nuanced understanding of why singling out Martin is justified.
Did you bother to read the indictment? If you had, you would realize that he's not being arrested for price-gouging. That bullshit's still legal.
He's been arrested for securities fraud. He didn't get in trouble for stealing from the sick and needy, he got in trouble for stealing from the rich and powerful.
He was too loud about it and it was good to see how messed up the pricing game is in pharma from it. It brought tons of attention to it.
They want to sweep him under the rug and make everyone believe this is fixing something. This arrest is akin to Martha Stewart getting one of the few indictments from insider trading after events like Enron went down.
It is a show, it is a game, he played it too loudly. He became the public fall guy show piece in my opinion. Going after him for a multi-year SEC investigation right when he made another big price change? Too much attention was brought to drug pricing and controls, and they had something on him.
Am I the only one who thinks that this guy needs psychiatric attention, not jail? Every time i saw an interview conducted with this man he seemed like a complete psychopath.
181 comments
[ 175 ms ] story [ 5799 ms ] threadEdit: No need to hope anymore. Grand jury started in January and investigations ongoing since 2012.
1) "Innocent until proven guilty" and "wow, that timing sure is convenient".
2) LOL. grabs a bucket of popcorn
In this case the Market is Martin Shkreli, and what he's willing to bear is likely everything he owns.
I won't lose any sleep when this guy goes to prison for a long time, but no sense doing nonsense that will only mildly inconvenience him and give potential grounds for appeal.
I might be naive, but I'm under the impression that the book doesn't get thrown at white-collar criminals in the US.
what are the odds he just ends up on probation?
Personally, I think that impression (which is popular) is largely because A) white-collar criminals can typically afford better representation than someone e.g. accused of armed robbery; B) we're much more likely to hear about someone who embezzled $30 million getting off with a slap on the wrist than we are to hear about someone who broke into an empty apartment building getting a similarly light sentence.
You go to prison for getting caught lying during an investigation about white color crime.
It's largely a matter of whether the case is winnable. Then if he acts anything like his public persona suggests, I can't see too many prosecutors going easy on him, if he's abrasive or something? It's entirely possible they give him the Schwartz treatment.
What is the point of putting someone like this in prison? He wouldn't pose a threat to others if he were released immediately. He should be sentenced to spend his time and energy giving back to society.
I really want it to be true...
From Ken: If Reuters was there through independent investigation, then good for them. But if Reuters was there because of a tip from law enforcement, then I'd like to ask a couple of questions....
Who leaked the time and place of the arrest? Was it an FBI agent, a prosecutor, staff, a coordinating local cop? How high up in the government did the decision to leak the arrest go? Did the leak violate the law? Did it violate the defendant's rights? What was the government's purpose in leaking the time and place of the arrest? How does this instance fit into the pattern of which arrests get leaked and which don't? Which nonviolent defendants without records get arrested, and which get summonsed in (or self-surrender through arrangement with their lawyers), and why? What impact does a font-page picture of a defendant in handcuffs have on the jury pool? Is that impact a feature, or a bug, of leaking it? Was the leak intended to inflict extra-judicial humiliation and punishment on the defendant? If the government lies about whether or not it leaked, would you still keep it secret?
https://popehat.com/2015/12/17/an-open-letter-to-reuters-rep...
Both matters pre-date Skreli's national notoriety, because it was his new, post-Retrophin firm that made him "famous" for price gouging.
That this question even has any legitimacy is troubling in and of itself.
Remember, they got Al Capone in the 1930s for tax evasion - not all the other things he was certainly guilty of. Several other gangsters were convicted of things like mail fraud.
If you're guilty, or even just under investigation, don't paint a target on your back. A smart person would know to lay low. Schkreli ... didn't.
I would note that I have no knowledge of the investigation beyond what's being reported (and only a cursory knowledge of that). I could be totally wrong. Maybe these charges were immediately obvious to investigators and it's just taken them almost a year to get their ducks in a row. I'm just theorizing here based on some historical knowledge of famous criminals and how they were eventually brought down (see my comments above on gangsters in the 20s and 30s).
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-17/retrophin-...
PDF of complaint: http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/download.html?id=214847399&... from: http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/2mxis2kze/new-york-southern...
Edit:
The Retrophin complaint also contains more detail about what happend with Merril Lynch:
24. Shkreli also had to contend with Merrill Lynch, which had sued him and MSMB Capital in connection with the Orex Trade (the “Merrill Lynch Arbitration”). Shkreli and MSMB Capital had entered into a settlement agreement with Merrill Lynch that required Shkreli and MSMB Capital to execute confessions of judgment in favor of Merrill Lynch. The confessions of judgment would not be filed if Shkreli and MSMB Capital timely paid the agreedupon settlement amount. Shkreli funded the Merrill Lynch settlement – and avoided the filing of the confessions of judgment – by causing a $900,000 investment in Retrophin equity securities made by MSMB Healthcare to be recharacterized as a “loan,” causing the “loan” to be repaid with interest, and using the “loan” proceeds together with other money taken from Retrophin to pay Merrill Lynch. See generally ¶¶47-58, infra.
Naked shorting is more of a systemic problem because you can put downward pressure on a stock even when the market is not willing to sell at the price you are pretending to sell at. It also makes it hard to keep track of voting shares and you can see many more votes than actual shares.
In addition to failing to settle a huge short position, he managed to turn $1.12 million into $58,500 in 28 days.
> Contrary to SHKRELI' s representations to Merrill Lynch, MSMB Capital had failed to locate OREX shares to borrow in order to settle MSMB Capital's short sales. As a result, MSMB Capital failed to settle a short position of over 11 million shares of OREX, which Merrill Lynch ultimately closed at a loss of over $7 million. In addition to the losses in the Merrill Lynch account, MSMB Capital suffered over $1 million in other trading losses in approximately February 2011. Based on these trading losses, the value of assets in MSMB Capital's bank and brokerage accounts, not including the OREX losses at Merrill Lynch, declined from more than $1.12 million on or about January 31, 2011 to $58,500 at the end of February 2011.
Update: As has been pointed out, this comes as no surprise since this kind of price gouging is perfectly legal.
This is more of a market failure.
Unintended consequences are a bitch.
Also, who defends economic libertarianism "for the sole reason that it allows them to pay less taxes, regardless of what's in the public interest"? I know that's a favorite caricature of libertarians that's dear to those who don't agree with libertarianism, but that doesn't mean it's true.
Not that your comment is particularly worth of discussion, but you'd think there would better reasoning behind calling out a broad category of commenters out as being "disgustingly selfish".
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/business/media/martin-shkr...
Seems like it's unlikely that you can just FOIA arbitrary data from a CD or hard drive that's been seized during an investigation though.
I love people who actually do this sort of thing, in the same way I love the people that send John Oliver actual 50 pound bags of seed.
FOIA is not used to obtain information contained in the seized material, but information that arose during the investigation. If for some reason, the information created in the investigation contained the actual recording from the album, then you could at least theoretically ask for that information. If not, then there was no information to ask for in the first place.
What can I ask for under the FOIA?
A FOIA request can be made for any agency record. You can also specify the format in which you wish to receive the records (for example, printed or electronic form). The FOIA does not require agencies to create new records or to conduct research, analyze data, or answer questions when responding to requests.
1. It cannot be sold. Given away, yes, but the current owner doesn't seem like someone who will just release the tracks for the world to enjoy for free.
2. It can be stolen back. By Wu-Tang Clan. Or by Bill Murray.
Note to self: if you ever take up stealing as a primary business, do it quietly and don't attract attention to your fellows.
Shkreli seemed like such an obvious troll in how he defended his price gouging by saying that a CEO's role is to maximize profit for the benefit of shareholders...and yet did so in such an unnecessarily obnoxious way that if he truly were the uber-capitalist, he would know that bragging and drawing attention to what an asshole you are does not achieve the true capitalist goal. I would've bet money that in a year, he would reveal that his act was just a trolling piece of noble performance art to raise awareness of how evil corporations could be.
I'm holding out hope that getting arrested and indicted is still all part of his greater plan, though if so, it's a bit more elaborate than it needs to be, IMHO :)
Same way as anyone else: meritocracy!
http://hiphopdx.com/interviews/id.2825/title.martin-shkreli-...
In short, he was arrested for securities fraud. This isn't related to his price-hiking antics, rather it involves his work running pharmaceutical companies and lying to investors.
People who say those kinds of things are no better than him. Possibly worse.
The solution to dealing with people like him is to be able to separate them from society or fix the system so it can no longer be exploited so "easily".
He may have hurt a lot of people but it's been through proxy as far as we know. Like Drone strikes, if you can't see the damage you're doing you can't feel guilty about it.
Like Morgan on the Walking Dead. I do believe Martin is a good guy on the wrong path.
It's easy to come together to have shared hatred for this guy and it's hard to realize
I can do better as a human being with empathy towards someone who is broken; sad and probably doesn't understand why people hate him.
He's just being "successful" as it was always defined to him.
Like the Boston Bomber. Getting "Revenge" does not stop the perpetual cycle violence and misbehavior.
The Wolf of Wall Street was a glorification of this type of behavior and a lot of people saw Jordan in that movie as a "Hero"
Interesting analogy, and I'm glad you pointed this out. I was disgusted by Wolf of Wall Street, and even more disgusted by how exalted Belfort became after. So many friends and acquaintances admired and aspired towards what they saw in the film - that was the worst part of it for me. I just can't relate.
Edit: tried to take, because it's still hard to assimilate
It was great inspiration for me to hope that one day I could hope to take a bunch of SSRI drugs and go on a murderous rampage in some random Wall Street hedge fund office!
(I'm mostly kidding)
Boiler Room is also a favorite, which of course is related to Wolf of Wall Street.
Parker said that he resolved after that not to use violence in a film in that way again.
What makes you think he's a good guy? All the evidence points to the contrary, both morally and apparently ethically and legally based on this indictment.
Not sure how you can defend that with this floating around.
http://mic.com/articles/125657/turing-ceo-martin-shkreli-wan...http://hiphopdx.com/interviews/id.2825/title.martin-shkreli-...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10750928
If someone says something and then says "it was a joke", "it was a game", "I was just making a point", that doesn't cancel out the words and their impact - social atmosphere is not an intellectually pristine environment. You will change the atmosphere by yelling "fire" in a crowded theater and once it's done, there is no going back.
Likewise, if we dismiss someone's statement because "it was attention seeking", "they didn't really mean it", "something was misunderstood", "it's just part of the culture", that also doesn't cancel it out.
There are plenty of young, impressionable folks who latch on to ideas unthinkingly because they cannot take anything seriously at their age and level of maturity. But that is not usually the case with a 32-year-old adult like Shkreli, or people in hiphop culture, or people in actual street gangs.
Posturing language exists to make a claim to credibility. It serves a real purpose and is used in an instrumental way, for the purpose of conducting business on the terms of those who use it. The people who exploit this language the best contain in their personality some particular combination of motivation and lack of restraint, enabling their threats to be real to some degree.
Shkreli already displays such a personality among multiple facets. There is no reason to deny him the possibility of simply being a bad human being who is in need of careful monitoring by society.
>>> "Posturing language exists to make a claim to credibility. It serves a real purpose and is used in an instrumental way, for the purpose of conducting business on the terms of those who use it."
>>> "enabling their threats to be real to some degree."
>>> "There is no reason to deny him the possibility of simply being a bad human being who is in need of careful monitoring by society."
Do you realize what you're advocating here? Also, referencing "fire in a crowded theater" is usually looked upon as a canary for those who don't know what they're talking about in regards to free speech
Are we really going to have this stupid god damn conversation again? Threatening speech is not protected. Acting like a fucking jackass might be protected speech but it doesn't protect you from the forum of public opinion.
Ironically, pretty much everytime I see someone whining about free speech, they're talking about it non-governmental contexts... the ultimate irony of you telling others they don't know what they're talking about.
If you're a jerk to people and then backpeddle with "it's a joke", you're still a jerk, and you're still not welcome in any space I curate.
edit: And now elsewhere you're calling people unempathic for being upset with him. Dude, he might have been raised by narcissists but at some point you have to take responsibility for how you act.
He's repeatedly done very unstable, aggressive things. If he's not actually slightly sociopathic, he's a huge asshole and I literally can not for the life of me imagine why you'd be vaguely defending him.
Also, by the way, threatening speech is technically protected under the first amendment [1]. Dunno why you brought up the government/public opinion topic.
Here's a lawyer, something I am not, on the matter, although I think we're devolving from my initial point: [0] https://popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackne... [1] https://popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackne...
To address my empathy comment, I think it's in very poor taste to declare someone "sociopathic" (i.e. shades of mentally ill) if you're not a doctor, close friend/family member, or otherwise licensed professional. Doubly so to make such a judgement based off a small sampling of online commentary. We should all strive to be empathetic and employ a principle of charity when making such judgements, especially before we know the facts.
>Doubly so to make such a judgement based off a small sampling of online commentary.
Just because you're ignorant about Martin doesn't mean the rest of us are. I just am absolutely aghast at you keeping this up. Just go Google him, read a couple articles and get over it. Stop acting like this is some secret accusation that you don't have the evidence for.
>Dunno why you brought up the government/public opinion topic.
Because "Free speech" has fuck all to do with anything being discussed in this thread? Unless you're really saying that this investigation that began before he was ever in the news is about "silencing" Martin.
Seriously, do you know a single thing about him or his company?
I'm sorry I said he was slightly sociopathic. Let me rephrase "He has, on multiple occasions, acted similarly to how classic sociopaths act". ...... yeah, everyone cool now?
>We should all strive to be empathetic and employ a principle of charity when making such judgements, especially before we know the facts.
And I should empathize with The Westboro Baptist Church and try to "understand" them instead of just investing in efforts that oppose them, eh? I'm tired of this "you have to tolerate intolerance or you're just as bad" and all this other hand-wavey bullshit that is completely pointless. I know everything I need to know to conclude that Martin is a disreputable person that I wouldn't be caught dead with. I think he has a huge ego and treats people very poorly. There are plenty of examples of all of these things.
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.
Many people nod their heads at this example, but they forget that Holmes was using it to justify the imprisonment of a man for leafletting against the draft. Those who earnestly reference "fire in a crowded theater" would likely stop if they knew its history. If anything, it argues against their point.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
I bet the author of the parent comment to yours — like myself — was ignorant of this.
We ought not to punish people for merely being accused of or indicted for a crime. Today it's this asshole, tomorrow it could be you.
Too many people have faith in the judicial system. I wish they would all have to defend themselves, just once, from an unsubstantiated criminal charge.
They would find out, very quickly, just how scary the system can be.
He obviously is somehow obsessed with the Wu-Tang Clan, so I'd guess his life philosophy is a based on a combination of rap gangsters and wall street traders. Both very American. Sorry for oversimplifying.
"I can do better as a human being with empathy towards someone who is broken; sad and probably doesn't understand why people hate him."
If we ever want to stop hatred, if we ever want to stop violence, if we ever want to fundamentally stop the same alienated people who turn to mass violence as their destructive outlets, we have to do it with empathy.
This article is great, and I post it every time the gun control argument comes up after every mass shooting that comes up:
http://markmanson.net/school-shootings
Empathy is the only thing that will save us. It might not save us all, but we have to try.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster
(Assumes cardinal utility, but it still works.)
According to this piece, they feel guilty about it,
Former Drone Pilots Denounce 'Morally Outrageous’ Program | NBC News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ1BC0g_PbQ
The reason there's so much antipathy lately toward white-collar criminals is backlash against judges and prosecutors being sympathetic and lenient toward their fellow clean-cut professionals. That antipathy has only manifested in angry protests and op-eds by the powerless, not the prosecutorial and judicial decisions that Shkreli is in the hands of now.
You could say we're all good guys on some kind of path. The typical third-world warlord is 'just being "successful" as it was always defined to him.'
Everyone should get society's best attempt at impartial justice and a compassionate, non-violent, and restorative treatment. But poor folks like Eric Garner are the ones who've been lacking this justice. Shkreli will probably get probation, a fine, and some community service like the handful of executives offered up after the last financial crisis.
Like most businesspeople he probably adopts the ethos of getting away with what he can within the law, and possibly bending the law where he can get away with it. Google's offshore profit laundering system is an example of a similar approach.
I think it's a mistake to believe this guy is all that different from average in his moral behavior. Most of us never get the opportunity to price pharmaceuticals, but chances are most business owners don't simply give away the product to those who want it.
Differentiating between customers wanting and needing a product is a slippery slope.
In the 'even the worst guy in the world is a good guy once you look past what ever issues result in them being evil' way?
>He's just being "successful" as it was always defined to him.
There are SO many ways I could run with this.
Honestly, I think one could try to make the argument that there are no evil people, just broken ones. Is that what you are trying to say? If not, I find it hard to justify this guy as a good guy otherwise.
>People who say those kinds of things are no better than him. Possibly worse.
If wishing bad things would happen to someone who has done bad things and actually raising the price of AIDS drugs fiftyfold to get rich are anywhere near each other in your moral calculus, I'm terrified of your moral calculus (especially that it may be common.)
But I just imagine that. It's not like I would ever attempt to actually set up such a thing.
Or I imagine that he goes in, and most everyone is kept segregated under extremely high security, with leg shackles and spit masks. He is put into a cell, and his cell mate has a horribly scarred face, but a bright, friendly grin, insomuch as the scars allow it. That night, he wakes up, unable to move, as the razor blade digs into his face. "I used to have that pretty face. Why should you get to keep it?" The next morning, his cell mate is taken away to solitary. A few weeks later, after his wounds heal, he gets a new cell mate. Lo, it's Martin Shkreli! So he flashes a bright, friendly grin as he thinks about his hidden razor blade. Rod Serling narrates us out, talking about the prison where all the other prisoners are copies of you.
We need to imagine prison as a terrible place, where bad people get punished as they rightly deserve, because we need to believe that putting people inside actually somehow serves justice in a useful way.
He won't get beat up in jail because he deserves it, but because he will find no one inside willing to watch his back, and the other inmates will attempt to extort some of that pharma-CEO cash out of him while he is within their reach.
I assure you, I am well aware of the boundary between fact and fiction. I am actually a bit worried that you find words and imagination to be cause for concern. That fear leads to censorship, which is far worse than any of the fantasy blurbs I have ever written.
My real-life hope for Shkreli is that he will be very, very bored for about three to four years (if convicted), and that all the folks he (allegedly) defrauded are able to get some restitution. He doesn't even need to be beaten with meaty thug fists. He just needs to be kept away from productive workers and other people's money. And maybe also the cocaine.
"In September 2015, Shkreli received widespread criticism when Turing obtained the manufacturing license for Daraprim, and raised its price by 5,500 percent (from $13.50 to $750 per tablet)."
From what the media reports on him and what I saw on Twitch, seems as though he may have a bit of a Jekyll-Hyde type personality.
He seems sociopathic to me.
All videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA/vid...
Example investing lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeKinQ7t-xU&t=58m29s
Edit: Not sure if these include videos/recordings from Twitch.
He's been arrested for securities fraud. He didn't get in trouble for stealing from the sick and needy, he got in trouble for stealing from the rich and powerful.
It makes you feel good, you feel justice has been served.
But let me give a harsh dose of reality, if he is going to court/jail, shouldn't most of the Wall St. bankers be in jail.
Including every bodies favorite banker John Corzine. http://www.newsweek.com/stalking-jon-corzine-317733
So before you feel good about feeling good, let's not forget that many bankers walk free in society and this is more of click bait story, just saying.
They want to sweep him under the rug and make everyone believe this is fixing something. This arrest is akin to Martha Stewart getting one of the few indictments from insider trading after events like Enron went down.
It is a show, it is a game, he played it too loudly. He became the public fall guy show piece in my opinion. Going after him for a multi-year SEC investigation right when he made another big price change? Too much attention was brought to drug pricing and controls, and they had something on him.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crime-shkreli-idUSKBN0...