"Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli ordered to forfeit nearly $7.4 Million
NEW YORK--Martin Shkreli has been ordered by a federal judge to hand over nearly $7.4 million, a victory for prosecutors who claimed the onetime hedge fund manger swindled his investors.
The order would allow the government to go after Shkreli's personal property if he doesn't have the cash — including $5 million in a trading account, a one-of-a-kind edition of an album by the Wu-Tang Clan and shares in Vyera Pharmaceuticals, formerly known as Turing Pharmaceuticals, according to prosecutors. It says the assets won't be seized until Shkreli has a chance to appeal.
Monday's ruling in a Brooklyn, New York, court comes four days before Shkreli's scheduled sentencing in the wake of his August conviction of defrauding investors in hedge funds he oversaw by misleading them about his track record, along with a fraud scheme related to Retrophin, a company he founded.
Shkreli, 34, is perhaps best known for his belligerent personality and for hiking the price of a life-saving drug, Daraprim, while CEO at Turing Pharmaceuticals. He had made a case that he should not have give up any of his money, or at least very little, contending he did not profit from his illegal activities.
Prosecutors last month claimed that Shkreli cost investors more than $20 million by convincing them to put millions into hedge funds that he ran like Ponzi schemes.
Shkreli has been jailed since September after he offered $5,000 for each sample of Hillary Clinton's hair that his followers on social media obtained for him.
—The Associated Press contributed to this report