Photo Martin Shkreli is chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals and a former hedge fund manager. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times Martin Shkreli, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and former hedge fund manager who has been widely criticized for drug price gouging, was arrested Thursday morning by the federal authorities.
The investigation, in which Mr. Shkreli has been charged with securities fraud, is related to his time as a hedge fund manager and running the biopharmaceutical company Retrophin — not the price-gouging controversy that has swirled around him.
Mr. Shkreli, 32, is now chief executive and founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals, which has drawn scrutiny for acquiring a decades-old drug and raising the price of it overnight to $750 a pill, from $13.50. In a recent interview with The New York Times, he acknowledged the regulatory and criminal investigations into claims of wrongdoing at hedge funds he once controlled as well as at Retrophin, but was dismissive of their importance.
He was arrested in his Midtown Manhattan apartment, according to a law enforcement source, who declined to be identified because the indictment had not been unsealed. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn were expected to hold a news conference on the charges later Thursday.
Evan L. Greebel, a corporate lawyer at Kaye Scholer who has worked with Mr. Shkreli, was also arrested on Thursday morning. A spokesman for the firm, which Mr. Greebel joined this year, declined to comment.
In 2011, while running the hedge fund MSMB Capital Management, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which adopted a controversial business strategy that has come under scrutiny. It acquired old, neglected drugs often used for rare diseases and substantially raised their prices. Retrophin, for example, raised the price of Thiola, used to treat a disease that causes kidney stones, to $30 a pill from $1.50. In 2012, he took Retrophin public through […]
