Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - 'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli: Con man or mad genius?

Episode Date: July 5, 2017

Federal prosecutors want the judge in Martin Shkreli's securities fraud trial to order the so-called "Pharma Bro" to shut up. Shkreli, who is infamous for buying rights to an AIDS drug and raising the price 5,000-percent, has ignored his lawyer's advice to not talk to reporters. In this episode, Nancy Grace and Alan Duke talk about the Wall Street investor's latest courthouse antics. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. The feds came after him for securities fraud. Shkreli was arrested in 2015 and charged by the SEC with committing a series of financial frauds over a five-year period. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. These charges are unrelated to what earned him national scorn and the nickname Pharma Bro. Martin Shkreli has never shied away from the spotlight and he certainly isn't doing that now during his trial. Prosecutors ridiculed by Martin

Shkreli want him to be quiet, accusing him of making a spectacle of himself and the trial. Just days after he blasted them as junior varsity, Martin's message was that they're not covering his trial fairly. Shkreli's attorney blames the media and what he calls his client's frail emotional state. Imagine that you or someone you love deeply, a family member, a child, a mother, a father, brother is stricken with cancer or HIV. And that pill costs 17 cents to make. It sells for $13 a pill. And then suddenly that pill is jacked up to $750 a pill. $750 a pill. $750. Not per prescription, but per pill.

You know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the life-saving pill, Daraprim, that is used to fight HIV and cancer. It's actually an anti-parasitic drug for people whose immune systems are completely depleted. It's a life or death medication. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. And right now, the man who jacked up the price from a 17 cents cost to make the pill to $750 a pill is on trial.

Now, here's the kicker. He's not on trial for jacking up the price. That has nothing to do with this trial. He's on trial for wire and securities fraud and that sounds so esoteric so ivory tower like what is that i'll tell you what it is in a nutshell 1928 crash stock market crash people work their whole lives they lose everything nothing left they jump out of windows. They kill themselves over the crash. 1934, blue sky laws enacted securities protections, which means you have to be honest with investors. You have to tell them what they're investing in. Like, I work like a dog. I got my little 401k. I tried to read all that stuff.

And it's invested in what are considered secure stocks. You know, like, what do you say, a Vanguard or a blue chip fund or, you know, funds. It's invested in a lot of different things. And I trust the bank. Am I wrong? Are they lying to me? That's what securities laws do. They make investors tell you the truth about what's happening with your money. And this guy, Martin, it's a crazy last name, Martin Shkreli, S-H-K-R-E-L-I, Shkreli. It's Albanian.

A genius. There's no doubt about the fact that Martin Shkreli is a genius. I have no doubt about that. But by his own admissions, it seems to be, or let me just say this, not by his own admissions, that federal prosecutors claim that he took people's money and millions of dollars of money, and then he used their money to pay off other investors because of some of his bad decision-making, bad business decisions.

You know, Alan Duke joining me. Alan, you know, both of our fathers worked like dogs on the railroad. Same company for the same amount of years, yes. My mom, I can't remember her bringing home a stack of work. She got home 6, 7 o'clock. She'd have a huge stack of papers, and on top would be one of those calculators with the cord dangling down.

I'd run out to meet her to try to help her bring it all in. And while we would have, we'd eat dinner, and then we would sit, you know, maybe look at our homework, maybe watch TV, and she'd be sitting in a chair behind us just working on that calculator until 10, 10 o'clock at night. And the morning when I'd wake up, she'd have breakfast laid out, and she'd be gone to work, work, work, work. Alan, to think that they would put their life savings somewhere and some a-hole would invest it in something they didn't know about? Uh-uh.

Like, I'm going to invest my 401K with a guy that goes, oh, yeah, I'm going gonna use all your money your life savings uh when you've been working three jobs at a time for years on end i'm just gonna use that to pay off my other investors in another company okay you know yeah this is like the bernie madoff ponzi scheme except um bernie madoff probably wasn't as villainized as Martin Shkreli. And he should have been. Yeah, well, I mean, he is. I mean, he was.

It's just that's a whole different level that he took it to. But the difference with Martin Shkreli is not that he's doing or allegedly did something that a lot of other people haven't done, whether they're caught or not. But he was just more audacious about it. And his audaciousness came to light when he raised the price of that antiparasitic drug that so many people depended on. The HIV pill. Yes.

Daraprim. I think that there is actually a positive message in this whole thing, because first of all, the guy is on trial. And second of all, the irony is that justice was done with the pill. He went up to $750 a pill. Now, you know what you can buy that same drug for from another company? What? $1 a pill.

Okay, listen to this. Two things I don't want to forget number one his his defense attorney this is the headline his defense attorney brothman benjamin brothman I would go out on a limb and say he is if not the one of the premier criminal defense attorneys in the united states. You don't see him chatting it up on cable TV or going out to nightclubs and making a name for himself. Uh-uh. This guy don't play. So what gives it away for me is that Screlly, Martin Screlly, is not doing what broffman's telling him to do

not at all he goes shut up and he goes and gives a press conference or pops into the overflow room of the of the media and i've never seen that happen i yeah you know but what you said is right that he was brought to our attention when he jacked up, hijacked the price of Daraprim on HIV and cancer patients. That got his attention. He was arrested and brought to congressional hearings where they asked him about the hike price. He invoked his right to remain silent and then took to Twitter and called them all imbeciles for asking. Now, I'm not arguing that they're not. Some of them could be construed as an imbecile, okay, not fighting the facts.

But it's like having your cake and eating it, too. You can't whine, I want my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and then take to Twitter. Right. So that's how he got our attention is that price hike. But then because of that, the Fed started looking at him or maybe they were looking at him secretly before then. I think that they were, but this made it a higher. Keep in mind in the presidential race, all of the big candidates slammed him, including Trump, Sanders and Hillary Clinton all attacked this guy. When you get that kind of attention, watch out. Now, here's his defense. Yes, I'm telling you somebody's defense. He says,

all of my investors were paid back. Nobody got hurt. In fact, most of them made a profit. Yeah, that's what he's saying. That's his defense. And I think that's one of the reasons he keeps taking to Twitter and speaking out so the jury will somehow get the message which says to me he's not taking a stand. If he's speaking this way, trying to circumvent the trial procedure, he's trying to say, look, no harm, no foul. All my investors got paid back i'm being villainized but it's that yes may be part of the point but the fact is he took people's he took your money alan pretend he took your money and he used it to pay off the investors and one of his hedge fund

disasters and they all got paid off Everybody got paid off according to him. I don't know that. But that's what he's saying his defense is. Okay. Is that the way you understand it? Yes, yes. Ponzi scheme. This guy, you've got to admire certain things about him

and absolutely detest other things. He was 17 years old when he got into this business as an intern on Wall Street, came from humble beginnings, and it was just really smart. Yep. His family came from, I think, Brooklyn neighborhood. It's Albanian immigrants. Croatian, I think. Croatian immigrants. And he worked, worked, worked. He taught himself chemistry, as I recall. Then he got into interning with a firm that belonged to a CNBC star. And that's when he really, really took off. After that, he started his own business and has flourished ever since.

And, I mean, he may be a genius. I'm not arguing that. But I know this. I want to know where my hard-earned money is invested because I don't buy anything for me. Nothing. I don't have my nails done. Zip. I'm still wearing my dad's athletic socks okay now the twins i will break down and

spend money but i'm not saving all that for their future to invest with somebody that lies to me keep in mind these these people are not like you keep saying keep in mind like i'm gonna forget something you people yes because these are these these alleged victims are people who essentially were gambling on Wall Street. They knew the risk and they invested in him. He was a known quantity. When you invest with someone like this, you're rolling the dice. You're reading all these chat rooms and you're trying to get some inside information. These are not people who went in blindly like my dad or your dad would have with their railroad salaries. These were people who were trying to make a quick

buck. I want to talk about the jury selection really quickly. They can't get a jury. They've gone through 100 people in one day. One woman says, I mean, it's funny to me it's not funny to him i'm sure but luckily for him she was thrown off the jury she goes when i look at him i just see his big snake sitting there and i just can't get that image out of my head i would not want her on my jury he's kind of a small every time she looks like she sees a giant snake. And I can't help but think of the giant snake in Harry Potter. What was that thing's name? Nagimi. Yeah, I think of Nagimi.

And the woman was almost on the jury every time she looks at him, she thinks of Nagimi. Yeah, okay, lucky for him, the jury voir dire process worked and she was taken off the jury. But one juror said, wait, is this guy that jacked up the price Lucky for him, the jury voir dire process worked and she was taken off the jury. But one juror said, wait, is this guy that checked up the price on EpiPens? I mean, it's like, this is a hot mess trying to strike this jury. It's a big mess.

So, but I can tell you this, if anybody can pull this off, it's Broffman, you know. And I don't have a dog in the fight. I don't know Brofman. Unless if he bit me on the neck, I wouldn't know it was him. Except from seeing him occasionally. But if anybody can pull this off, it's going to be him. I'm telling you that. If they can just keep whatever his name is. Screlly.

If they can keep. Could we call him? They're calling him Pharma Bro. I think they ought to call him Pharma Creep. Well, I don't, well, I can't say that I've never used a moniker. Top Mom, you've used monikers. See, okay, yeah, I know. Here's the thing.

You've created so many monikers. I would have suggested at the get-go that the defense file a motion in limine, which is a motion before the evidence even starts, disallowing any evidence of the whole Darapin incident, the price gouging, because that is unrelated to this trial. But instead, they're asking about it in voir dire. Do you know about this are you going to hold that against him i mean they've brought it out themselves well the thing is that he is tweeting oh by the way this morning this is news today his twitter account was suspended today he's been suspended before and he creates a new twitter account under a fake name under a different moniker. And he just had his

latest, where he was criticizing government, the prosecution. It was suspended as of this morning. Oh, you mean when he called him Junior Varsity? Yeah. Yeah. And worse. But the jury, maybe they look at the Wall Street Journal or their other

papers, or they see it on Twitter. I doubt they'll see it there. But he's making all these public pronouncements. And so they're going to find out about him outside of the courtroom if the court isn't very careful. And that's what the court is trying to do. They're trying to gag him now. Okay, we'll see where it goes. All I know is he claims everybody was paid off. But the fact remains, if he used investors' money, like my dad, my mom, your parents, if he used their money to pay off another hedge fund losses, that is a violation of securities laws. He's got eight charges. He's looking at 20 years behind bars. We'll see where it goes. You know what? Everybody goes, oh, securities laws. That has nothing to do with me. Oh, yes, it does. If you have anything in savings or any kind of investment like a 401k

and IRA, it does affect you. It does affect you. Okay, when I drive up at the exit to the interstate and I'm digging through my console to give to the homeless person standing there, yeah, I don't want that to be you, Alan. Okay? All right? It may be. Okay, it may be. All right, Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off.

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