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Comment by nodesocket | Hacker News Reader

I'll be very curious to see how and if her charges compare to Martin Shkreli who got the book thrown at him (7 years and $7.4m). Shkreli was a scapegoat mostly because of his public/social media persona, cockiness, and arrogance.

Meanwhile the crooks that caused the financial meltdown have not been charged with anything.

Bene vixit, qui bene latuit— "He lives well who conceals himself well."

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Shkreli had an ongoing fraud and sec violations before Turing Pharma. Though it looks suspicious, his prosecution is coincidental with the Turing stuff and revolves around the truly atrocious management of his hedge fund.

Shkreli deserves what he got, but not because of his public bravado or raising the price of a drug, but because he actively embezzled money and created a Ponzi scheme.

Was it a Ponzi scheme? I've read that he basically lost his investors money in a real investment failure, and then 'donated' some of his shares from his other, unrelated company to make the investors a profit and look good.

Loosely speaking, it was - he was using the supposed gains of earlier investors to attract new investment, then using those new funds to pay off the earlier investors. It was spread across multiple investments rather than just one vehicle, but that seems kind of irrelevant.

"Prosecutors were focused on Shkreli’s leadership of two hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare, and a pharmaceutical company, Retrophin. Shkreli raised millions for MSMB Capital, but not as much as he told investors. When he made a bad bet that doomed the hedge fund, he launched a scheme to cover it up, prosecutors said. He raised more money for another hedge fund, MSMB Heathcare, which he largely used to fund the start up of Retrophin.

When disgruntled investors attempted to claim their profits, Shkreli used money from other investors and Retrophin cash and stock to pay them off, according to prosecutors." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/08/04/m...

That’s a Ponzi scheme.

Except a Ponzi scheme repays old clients with new client funds. In this case he was paying them out of his own pocket.

I don't think he was a scapegoat per se, he did actually do illegal things. But I imagine that things would have gone a lot better for him if he had not jacked up the price of Daraprim to the extent he did. It seems that drew attention to his previous activities.

He didn’t hide from what he was doing - he embraced it. Make no mistake, big pharma is doing the exact same things.

I for one am appreciative that he called attention to the power monopolies have over the pricing of medicine.

He had the book thrown at him because he drew attention to what modern capitalism is.

> jacked up the price of Daraprim

Which by the way is completely legal and common in the pharmaceutical market, but the media outrage and SJW backlash made it seem illegal.

Didn't realize President Trump is/was a SJW

http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-martin-shkreli-d...

You learn something new everyday.;)

>Bene vixit, qui bene latuit— "He lives well who conceals himself well."

The Trump administration should've hired you as a consultant.

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