Pharma Bro Found Guilty of Fraud

A jury has found Martin Shkreli guilty on two counts of security fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit security fraud, and not guilty on five other counts, in a trial that centered on the former pharmaceutical executive's management of two hedge funds.

The trial itself lasted for five weeks in a Brooklyn court, and jury deliberations lasted nearly five days. Shkreli is best-known for hiking the price of a life-saving drug, Daraprim, while acting as CEO at Turing Pharmaceuticals.

Daraprim has been available since 1953. Shkreli bought the rights to sell Daraprim to treat a parasite infection, only to raise the price from $13.50 to $750 a pill. Later, he defended the 5,000 percent price hike as "not greedy at all."

Daraprim was originally developed as a treatment for toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by a parasite. It comes from eating under-cooked meat or drinking contaminated water, and impacts those with compromised immune systems, like HIV and cancer patients.

When Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of Daraprim to $750 per tablet, the average cost of treatment for patients rose from about $1,130 to $63,000. For some patients, the cost went as high as $634,000.

While Shkreli acknowledged the move might look "greedy," he said there are "a lot of altruistic properties to it."

"This is a disease where there hasn't been one pharmaceutical company focused on it for 70 years. We're now a company that is dedicated to the treatment and cure of toxoplasmosis. And with these new profits we can spend all of that upside on these patients who sorely need a new drug, in my opinion," he later added.