Martin Shkreli is an American hedge fund manager and businessman. He founded biopharmaceutical companies Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals. In 2015, Turing acquired Daraprim and raised its price by over 5,000%. This sparked outrage as Daraprim treats life-threatening toxoplasmosis.
Early Life and Education
Shkreli was born in 1983 in New York to Albanian immigrant parents. He dropped out of high school but later earned a business degree. At 17, he interned for a hedge fund and was impressed with his biotech insights. After working at investment banks, he started his own hedge fund in 2009. He bet against biotech stocks.
Career
Shkreli founded Retrophin in 2011 to develop rare disease treatments. In 2014, he was ousted from Retrophin. The board accused him of misusing funds. He then started Turing Pharmaceuticals. Turing bought Daraprim and hiked its price overnight. Shkreli claimed this would fund new research, though it sparked severe backlash.
In 2015, Shkreli became CEO of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals. He planned to acquire a Chagas disease drug and charge up to $100,000. But he was fired after his arrest for fraud in December 2015. In 2016, he launched the software company Gödel Systems but shut it down quickly.
Controversies
That same year, Shkreli refused to testify about drug prices at a Congressional hearing. He was criticized for smirking and trolling. In 2017, he was convicted of defrauding investors and misleading them about funds. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison and ordered to forfeit millions in assets and pay millions in fines.
Net Worth
Despite controversies, Shkreli amassed wealth in pharmaceuticals and hedge funds. In 2015, his wealth reached $70 million. Though much was lost to fines and forfeitures, he rebounded to $100 million by 2023 through investments. He is serving his sentence but is eligible for release in September 2023.
