“Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli had a crypto lecture at a Brooklyn high school canceled by administrators, prompting the convicted fraudster to tell a reporter to “lick his butt” for asking about the fake lecture had.
Brooklyn Tech High School's crypto club had arranged for Shkreli to speak about crypto, artificial intelligence and the pharmaceutical sector at its scheduled meeting on Tuesday after 10th period.
The meeting was later “postponed indefinitely” after the New York City Department of Education deemed it a “bad public relations risk,” according to a post on the club’s Instagram Story.
A reporter from The Daily Beast then reached out to Shkreli to confirm whether the event had been canceled. That prompted Shkreli to post on social media and share his private conversations with the journalist.
In the published messages, Shkreli accused the journalist of calling the DOE and “forcing” the high school to cancel his appearance.
“Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli had a crypto talk at Brooklyn Tech High School canceled after school administrators learned he was appearing at a club meeting
Brooklyn Tech High School's crypto club said on Instagram that the event had been “postponed indefinitely” after the New York City Department of Education deemed it a “bad PR risk.”
'I'm not mad. Less work is better for me. I like having fans, but I don't want to work for them because I'm lazy. “So it would be good if it got canceled, but I think we'll do it somewhere else, which is bad for me because I'm lazy and that's what I said earlier in that quote,” Shkreli explained.
Shkreli, who is also known as “America's Most Hated Man,” further told the reporter, “Lick my ass too.”
In a separate post
In August 2015, Shkreli's company Turing Pharmaceuticals (now Vyera) acquired the rights to the drug Daraprim, an antiparasitic drug used by people with weakened immune systems such as AIDS patients.
By September, he increased the price of Daraprim by about 5,500 percent and defended the outrageous price increase by saying the company needed to generate profits to continue research and cover operating costs.
He was subsequently arrested for securities and wire fraud due to fraudulent practices in his companies between 2009 and 2014.
Prosecutors alleged he used the company's cash and stock to repay hedge fund investors for lost money.
At that time, he was released on $5 million bail and fired as CEO.
In 2016, he refused to testify before Congress, citing his Fifth Amendment rights while grinning at lawmakers who asked him about raising the price of Daraprim, a move for which he had become known.
The following year, Shkreli began harassing a journalist named Laura Duca on Twitter while using Photoshop to mock her husband and sending her various messages.
A reporter from The Daily Beast reached out to Shkreli to confirm whether the high school event had been canceled because the convicted fraudster took to social media and shared his private conversations
In 2015, Shkreli was accused of increasing a pharmaceutical company, Turing Pharmaceuticals (now Vyera), by around 5,500 percent
He is seen smiling in Congress as they question him about a drug to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that threatens people with weakened immune systems
He was later banned from Twitter but continued to create several accounts.
His trial began later that year, when he faced up to 20 years in prison and was ultimately convicted by a Brooklyn jury in August on three of the eight federal counts.
His bail was subsequently revoked and he was officially sent to prison on September 13 after he reportedly threatened a former presidential candidate on social media.
On Facebook, he offered $5,000 to someone to grab Hillary Clinton's hair while she was on her book tour.
“The Clinton Foundation is willing to KILL to protect its secrets.” So try to cut off a hair on HRC's book tour. I need to confirm the sequences I have. “Will pay $5,000 per hair received from Hillary Clinton,” he wrote at the time.
He also bought a Wu-Tang Clan album for $2 million, allegedly bought Jay Z tickets for $10,000 with company money, and trolled the Internet tirelessly.
He was sentenced to seven years in prison for defrauding investors as he wept in court and said: “I want the people who came here today to support me to understand one thing: the only person for this “The person responsible for me being here today is me.” I defeated Martin Shkreli.'
He was subsequently released from the Fort Dix prison after being accused of using a contraband cell phone to run his business while in prison and was transferred to the Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex in Pennsylvania.
In May 2019, Shkreli sued Retrophin's directors and former general counsel for over $30 million, and a year later his request for release to work on a COVID-19 vaccine was denied.
He was released from prison early in May 2022 after serving five of his seven-year sentence and was sent to a halfway house in Brooklyn before moving in with a family member, remaining under house arrest and wearing an ankle bracelet.
Shkreli, 39, celebrated his release from prison at a Cracker Barrel restaurant on the day of his release. Shkreli was picked up by a friend on her last day in prison. The imprisoned “Pharma Bro” was released two years early for good behavior
Shkreli was arrested in Manhattan in 2015 on securities fraud charges. A judge later sentenced the former pharmaceutical industry executive to seven years in prison, but he only served five years because he was released early for good behavior
In an exclusive interview with , Shkreli revealed that he was not known as “Pharma Bro” or “America's Most Hated Man” in prison, but was instead nicknamed “Shkreli” and “Marty-Mar” by his fellow inmates.
After he was released, he announced that he planned to appeal an FTC ruling that banned him from the industry while also fining him $65 million.
Remaining confident that he will come out on top, he has already started work on a new venture that he said would give him an opportunity to take revenge on Big Pharma once and for all: a new software company for drug development, drug-like.
With the start-up, Shkreli wants to make early drug discovery more accessible by putting the same software used by billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies in the cloud and crowdsourcing it so it can be used by the masses.
Shkreli has made it clear that his new company is “not a pharmaceutical company” but a “drug discovery platform.”