It's Not Over Yet: Martin Shkreli Stays Mum on Plans for New Biotech Software Company

It's Not Over Yet: Martin Shkreli Stays Mum on Plans for New Biotech Software Company April 13, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

NEW YORK – Martin Shkreli, who famously earned the moniker “pharma bro” for his brash persona, is confident he will be found not guilty on all counts in his looming securities fraud trial.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Shkreli predicted the not guilty verdict will be announced within two hours of the jury’s deliberation. He said many of the jurors are likely to be fans of his—as are many people he says shake his hands on the streets of New York most every day.

“I walk down the streets of New York and people shake my hand. They say, ‘I want to be just like you,’ ” Shkreli said in his interview with Sheelah Kolhatkar.

Shkreli is currently awaiting trial for multiple charges of federal securities trade fraud. He is scheduled to go before a judge on June 26, 2017. The seven count indictment against Shkreli included multiple charges of securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy. U.S. Attorney Robert Capers accused Shkreli of running his former company Retrophin Pharmaceuticals and his former hedge fund MSMB Capital Management like a “Ponzi scheme.” The indictment said Shkreli’s scheme, which caused his investors to suffer a loss of more than $11 million, was carried out over a five-year period, from 2009 to 2014.

Shkreli said he would not be facing these charges had it not been for the ridicule he faced after his former pharma company Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim and jacked up the price by 5,000 percent – a move that was loudly criticized and brought him before a Congressional committee hearing, but a move he also loudly defended on every media platform available to him (until Twitter kicked him off on unrelated issues.)

While Shkreli is publicly confident he will be found not guilty, he has not remained idle in the year and some change since he was charged. Although he resigned his position at Turing and was removed as chief executive officer of California-based KaloBios , a company he acquired, Shkreli has kept his fingers in the industry. Currently Shkreli is attempting to launch a new biotech-software company called Godel Systems. He remained mum about what the venture would include, but told Kolhatkar that (in typical Shkreli braggadocio, “it will shock and awe the world.”)

While Shkreli remained mum on what Godel would do, he has raised about $50,000 as of a February announcement. John Carrol at Endpoints said the company is seeking $1 million in financing, citing a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s a far cry from the funding he commanded during his prime at the helm of a hedge fund or when he was running two pharmaceutical companies.

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