'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli sheds tears at sentencing hearing, gets 7 years in prison
Maligned "pharma bro" Marin Shkreli shed tears as he made a final plea to the judge who handed down his 7-year prison sentence in a New York courtroom on Friday afternoon for securities and wire fraud charges.
SEE ALSO: Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli trolls journalists in the most menacing way
Reporters for Vice, Bloomberg, and WCBS reported Shkreli's remorse for his many, many actions that have led to one of the biggest examples of schadenfreude we've seen in quite some time.
shkreli is crying at his sentencing right now
— allie conti (@allie_conti) March 9, 2018
#Shkreli: "There is so much more I want to do, and I will do it, the right way." Shkreli breaking down in tears as he says Brafman has mentored and advised him.
— Meg Tirrell (@megtirrell) March 9, 2018
Shkreli now sobbing: "Those who looked up to me... reassess my position. This is my fault." #PharmaBro #Shkreli @wcbs880
— Ethan Harp (@EthanHarpNews) March 9, 2018
The Associated Press also confirmed Shkreli's contrite sobs, reporting:
U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, though saying she believed he was remorseful, mentioned some of his more recent misdeeds, referencing both Shkreli's harassment of journalist Lauren Duca (which got him banned from Twitter), and that time Shkreli offered people money for Hillary Clinton's hair, which Matsumoto previously called a "solicitation of assault."
Judge: During remand proceedings, Shkreli made statements about wanting to have non-consensual sex with a journalist, and had solicited violence against Hillary Clinton. #PharmaBro #Shkreli @wcbs880
— Ethan Harp (@EthanHarpNews) March 9, 2018
Ultimately, Shkreli's apology did little to deter Matsumoto from handing down the 7 year sentence, which was a little less than half of what prosecutors had recommended; he reportedly faced a maximum sentence of 45 years.
Shkreli first came to incur the world's ire, and earned that derogatory "Pharma Bro" nickname, in 2015 when, as head of Turing Pharmaceuticals, he raised the cost of the drug Daraprim, used to treat parasitic infections in HIV patients, from $13.50-per-pill to $750-per-pill and showed little remorse for it.
There's also Shkreli's long, twisted tale involving an extremely rare Wu-Tang Clan album and having a donation made to Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign rejected by the candidate himself.
All that said, Judge Matsumoto said at the sentencing she did not take these into account when deciding Shkreli's sentence, focusing instead on the crimes he was found guilty of.
Judge says case is not about his self-created personal, politics or culture, or statements about pricing #PharmaBro #Shkreli @wcbs880
— Ethan Harp (@EthanHarpNews) March 9, 2018
Still, Shkreli leaves a long trail of bad karma and angry people — including his own lawyer — in his wake that aren't sad to see him to go to prison for fraud. Whether or not he'll be changed by his time in prison, we'll just have to wait and see.
