
Martin Shkreli steers his company from prison with contraband cellphone - glassworm
https://www.wsj.com/articles/martin-shkreli-steers-his-company-from-prisonwith-contraband-cellphone-11551973574
======
basseq
I'm left wondering: is this actually _illegal_?

If Shkreli _wasn 't_ in prison, then he would be a normal "activist investor"
who has the ownership (power) to dictate corporate strategy at the highest
levels. Whether he's the chief executive or not is kind of a moot point—that's
just a title.

If I recall correctly, a securities-related conviction would prevent him from
being a director of a publicly-traded company. But Phoenixus AG (née Turing)
isn't _public_ , so I don't think there's SEC limitations here.

That other shareholders want him removed from power is a preference and
disagreement, nothing more.

Was there anything else in his sentencing that would preclude him from these
kinds of activities? Or is this more a, _huh, that 's interesting_ message?

Reading the article, it seems like the rules he's breaking are:

1\. Having a cell phone in prison.

2\. "Running a business", in potential violation of the prison inmate
handbook. I'm unclear if there are any legal teeth behind said handbook, or
what.

The article also says that the FBI "has interviewed associates about his role"
at Phoenixus, but not _why_ they're doing that.

~~~
jfk13
If it's known that he has a cell phone, and it's against the rules to have one
in prison, I'm left wondering how hard it could possibly be for the prison
authorities to take it away from him. Or is there simply no effort to enforce
the rules?

~~~
wallace_f
If he has it, most likely he paid off an authority figure there, which would
be the only thing preventing a supposed confiscation.

Any time I read a story on prison, I seem to almost always end up hearing
about contraband. Even guys in solitary confinement with long-term heroin
addiction. In _solitary_ confinement. Authorities never are held responsible
for this. Prison needs major reform.(1)

1- [https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/special-
reports/artic...](https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/special-
reports/article152336587.html)

------
el_cujo
He's got an entourage that looks out for him, runs his company from a
contraband phone that he also posts on twitter from, lifts weights to keep
from getting too scrawny, pays off inmate's poker debts, takes care of cats,
helps inmates out with their grammar... This really sounds like something out
of a movie.

~~~
buboard
movies come out of life

------
mruts
I always really liked Martin Shkreli. He kind of reminds me of myself (maybe
that says more about me than Martin Shkreli). Maybe he ran a fraud, but he did
good by his investors, they got huge return off of his "scam." Of people who
are in jail for scams, almost all of them stole/lost money from their
investors, instead of actually making a shit-load of money for them.

People don't like him not because of his "scam", but because he raised drug
prices. Maybe people on HN and elsewhere think big pharma should be run as a
charity, but in my book, making as much money as you can is a good thing, a
noble and morally righteous thing in fact.

Companies should try and make as much money as humanly possible (without
breaking the law), because this is the only framework in which competition can
exist. Everyone, everywhere, should be as greedy as possible and try as make a
big of return on their investments as possible. This is the origin of
"competition."

If individuals and companies weren't doing that, our market wouldn't function
and it wouldn't delivery nearly as value as it does to society.

I happily look forward to the downvotes.

~~~
king07828
When Shkreli got vilified, he missed out on one of the biggest opportunities
to push for meaningful change. Media and Congress were "not kind" to his price
increases. Well, who passed the laws that allowed for those price increases
and stifled competition? At the time, I was hoping Shkreli would double down,
go all in, and blame Congress for passing the laws that were allowing for such
price increases and preventing competition (which big pharma had lobbied for
and gotten passed earlier). Demand that if Congress was serious about getting
him to reduce prices, all they had to do was repeal those laws. I.e., pass the
buck back and say "well if you don't like this behavior, then why did you pass
these laws?" and "oh, by the way, how many campaign contributions and PAC
donations did you get for passing these laws?" He could then pivot to say
"hey, I'm not raising prices to make money [at least not anymore], I'm raising
prices to increase awareness and bring accountability to Congress and hold
their feet to the fire."

~~~
icebraining
> blame Congress for passing the laws that were allowing for such price
> increases and preventing competition

That would be weird, since Daraprim (the drug he hiked) was out of patent,
anyone could make and sell it, and in fact a competitor did jut a couple of
months later[1]. How was Congress preventing competition?

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/30/express-scripts-imprimis-
to-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/30/express-scripts-imprimis-to-offer-
daraprim-alternative.html)

~~~
king07828
Patents weren't the issue. As I recall, Shkreli's company had the exclusive
right to market the drug in the US, regardless of patent protection. For
example, the FDA provides regulatory exclusivity that prevents generics from
entering the market even after the patent expires. [1]

Patents were a collateral issue. On that collateral issue, one of the issues
with patents is that drug companies have a tendency to stop producing drugs
towards the end of life of a patent to force patients onto a newly patented
drug. This practice could be stopped by allowing generics to produce, market,
and sell when the patent holder will not.

[1] [https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/journal-
articl...](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/journal-
article/2017/sep/determinants-market-exclusivity-prescription-drugs-united)

~~~
icebraining
Fair enough, there are other protections besides patents. Still, that doesn't
seem to be the case here at all; like I wrote, competitors were selling
alternatives within a couple of months.

What seems to me is that the market was crowded out while the primary producer
kept the prices low; when they were raised, the market responded.

------
turtlegrids
without the paywall [https://outline.com/9jcNDW](https://outline.com/9jcNDW)

------
itissid
I did really like his lectures on youtube on investing. One can learn a lot
about dissecting a company's fundamentals from them. I wish he had not done
all that stupid shit. I am not sure if he thinks he ever needed to anyways..

------
CompelTechnic
He still updates his blog multiple times a week.

[http://martinshkreli.com/](http://martinshkreli.com/)

~~~
natalyarostova
Free Shkreli

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d0100
Not new. Most drug lords from around here do the same.

------
dna_polymerase
> [..] when Turing raised the cost of an HIV drug to $750 per pill from
> $13.50.

It wasn't an HIV drug. Pyrimethamine is mainly used to treat toxoplasmosis.
Granted a huge target group would be HIV patients but right here that's just
spinning a narrative. Shkreli might be a questionable character but that
doesn't warrant publishing fake news.

------
onetimemanytime
Shkreli's real crime: small fish with a big mouth. If Shkreli was a CEO of a
$50 Billion company he'd be holding fundraisers for Trump or his opponents.
And the Feds would not dare arrest him for his defense would overwhelm the
feds.

 _(No doubt he did illegal stuff, but bigger fish do more than he did in his
lifetime, before 8 am)_

------
ryanlol
Snitching on any inmate like this is a terrible thing to do.

Nobody deserves the kind of attention this will attract from BOP.

------
SmellyGeekBoy
In any discussion about adblockers the consensus among HN readers seems to be
"I'd pay if I had the option" \- yet the first thing to appear on any
paywalled story is a link to Outline.

~~~
crikli
I'd pay given the right structure. Eg I'd pay fifty cents to a buck for a
given article. But monthly recurring payments to several different publishers?
Hard pass.

~~~
gigaftp
50 cents is far too much. I just read that article and it was pretty much just
filler.

------
mnm1
There's no difference between a CEO and a gangster apparently. They both ruin
lives, kill people, and use contraband cellphones from jail to continue doing
so. It's sad that our culture glorifies one but despises another when they are
equally evil and antisocial.

~~~
nemothekid
CEOs don’t go to jail for any of those things. The funniest thing about the
Shkreli case to me is that despite the bad press about who he was, what
actually put him jail was that he gambled (and won) with a some rich people’s
investments and then the SEC threw the book at him.

~~~
mnm1
Al Capone went to jail for tax fraud. It doesn't mean he didn't kill people or
that the comparison is not apt. It's right on point.

------
danschumann
People who don't even believe in karma are pretty dense. If you don't provide
value, you won't have anything. He took value from people, all was taken from
him. You can't escape it. It's the law of sewing and reaping.

~~~
icebraining
Actually, the people he defrauded (and for which he's in prison) all say he
doubled or even tripled their money.

~~~
heavenlyblue
Pyramid schemes also double and triple the money of people. Until they don’t.

That’s why we have securities laws.

