Music

Pharma villain and music fan Martin Shkreli arrested on fraud charges

by Jesse Locke

Martin Shkreli is making an ever-stronger case for the Troll of the Year 2015 title.

The 32-year-old pharmaceutical executive first earned headlines for raising the price of a vital AIDS drug from $13.50 to $750 per tablet. He used the profits from this price-gouging to fund Geoff Rickly’s Collect Records, then threw down $2 million for an exclusive Wu-Tang Clan album. Now, he’s been nabbed by the FBI on fraud charges.

As Bloomberg reports, Shkreli was arrested by federal agents at his home in Manhattan early Thursday with the suspicion of securities fraud and siphoning cash from Retrophin, a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, to pay off other debts he owed to investors. Bloomberg continues to explain this complicated “scheme”:

Federal prosecutors accused Shkreli of engaging in a complicated shell game after his defunct hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management, lost millions. He is alleged to have made secret payoffs and set up sham consulting arrangements. A New York lawyer, Evan Greebel, was also arrested early Thursday.

Shkreli recently conducted a revealing interview with HipHopDX where he announced his intentions to bail out Brooklyn rapper Bobby Shmurda.