Price-gouging pharma CEO arrested; social media offers a mega-dose of snark
Martin Shkreli’s ‘perp walk’ prompted disgust-filled rants for the man who had raised the price of a prescription drug 5,000 percent. #Karma was one of the hashtags we saw on Twitter.
Descriptive words were posted on the social media platform Thursday morning as news spread that Martin Shkreli had been arrested. Federal agents in New York busted the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals and KaloBios Pharmaceuticals for alleged securities fraud related to his former hedge fund and a pharmaceutical company he previously led, Reuters reported.
At a midday press conference, prosecutors said the 32-year-old Shkreli “essentially ran his companies like a Ponzi scheme, where he used each subsequent company to pay off defrauded investors in the prior company.” Just a couple of hours later, Shkreli pleaded not guilty, posted $5 million bail and was released from jail.
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