May 19, 2022 — Former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli was released from prison on Wednesday after serving most of his seven-year sentence for lying to hedge fund investors and defrauding drug company investors, according to The Associated Press.
Shkreli, 39, was released from a prison in Allenwood, Pa., and moved “community confinement,” or a halfway house overseen by the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ New York Residential Reentry Management Office, the AP reported. The bureau said his projected release date is Sept. 14.
“I am pleased to report that Martin Shkreli has been released from Allenwood prison and transferred to a BOP halfway house after completing all programs that allowed for his prison sentence to be shortened,” Ben Brafman, his attorney, told the AP.
Shkreli’s release slightly more than four years into his sentence came from completing education and rehabilitation programs while in prison. Brafman said he planned to make no additional comments and has encouraged Shkreli not to make any statements.
However, in a Facebook post on Wednesday, Shkreli shared a selfie with the caption, “Getting out of real prison is easier than getting out of Twitter prison.”
Shkreli was sentenced to seven years after a 2017 conviction for two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. He also was ordered to forfeit $7.3 million, the AP reported.
The federal jury found Shkreli guilty for lying to investors about the performance of two hedge funds he ran, defrauding investors in his first drug company, Retrophin, and skimming money from Retrophin to pay back investors at the hedge funds for losses he covered up.
Shkreli gained notoriety and was nicknamed “Pharma Bro” after buying rights to Daraprim, an antiparasitic drug used to treat an infection that occurs in some AIDS, malaria and cancer patients. He raised the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
However, Shkreli defended the decision as part of capitalism, saying that insurance companies and other health care programs would cover the cost for those who need the medication, the AP reported.
A day after he was arrested for the securities fraud charges in 2015, Shkreli resigned as chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, later called Vyera.
Earlier this year, Shkreli was ordered by a judge to return $64.6 million in profits that he and the company gained by raising the price of the drug. She also barred him from the pharmaceutical industry for the rest of his life, the AP reported.
