CEO Hated For Price Hiking HIV Drug Charged With Securities Fraud

Martin Shkreli, the hedge fund manager and drug company CEO who rose to infamy after gouging the price of a life-saving pill from $10.50 to $750, has been charged with securities fraud. The FBI arrested Shkreli at his home in Manhattan. He is being processed at FBI headquarters in New York and is expected to be arraigned today in Federal Court in Brooklyn.

Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, is alleged to have illicitly taken stock from a biotech company he founded to pay off debts from unrelated business transactions.

Shkreli gained America’s ire in September when he increased the cost of Daraprim by 5,000 percent. Daraprim, the common name for the drug pyrimethamine, is the only medication for treating toxoplasmosis, an infection contracted from cat parasites that can cause birth defects. It is also used as a co-treatment for HIV infections, some cancers, and malaria.

When asked by an audience member at a healthcare summit what he would do differently if he could go back in time to before his highly criticized decision to raise the price of a 62-year-old drug, the Turing CEO replied: “I probably would have raised prices higher, is probably what I should have done. I could have raised it higher and made more profits for our shareholders, which is my primary duty.”

After the outcry in September over Daraprim, Shkreli said the company would reduce the $750-a-pill price. Last month, however, Turing reneged on its pledge. Instead, the company is reducing what it charges hospitals for Daraprim by as much as 50 percent. Most patients’ co-payments will be capped at $10 or less a month. But insurance companies will be stuck with the bulk of the tab, potentially driving up future treatment and insurance costs.

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