Back in September, the New York Times reported that Turing Pharmaceuticals had increased the price of its HIV drug, Daraprim, from $13.70 per tablet to $750 per tablet.
Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.
The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Watch Turing CEO Martin Shkreli explain his decision on Fox Business:
Shkreli was arrested today by the FBI for securities fraud.
The pharma boss who became infamous after hiking the price of an HIV-related drug by 5,000 percent was arrested Thursday by the FBI, prosecutors said, accusing him of orchestrating a “trifecta of lies, deceit and greed.”The arrest of Martin Shkreli — a hedge fund manager-turned-pharmaceutical company CEO — comes amid an investigation related to “widespread fraud” through a hedge fund and drug company he once ran, according to a complaint filed by federal regulators.Shkreli, 32, who was taken into custody at his midtown Manhattan residence, is currently the boss of Turing Pharmaceuticals and KaloBios Pharmaceuticals.
Shkreli is facing a seven count indictment related to an assortment of fraud allegations and of treating his companies “like a Ponzi scheme.”
NBCNews continues:
Shkreli is named in a seven-count indictment in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, along with Evan Greebel, who was Retrophin’s outside counsel.At a news conference Thursday afternoon, U.S. Attorney Robert Capers in Brooklyn said Shkreli treated his companies as a “personal piggy bank” and ran them “like a Ponzi scheme.”Shkreli is being charged for illegally using Retrophin assets to pay off debts after MSMB lost millions of dollars.The indictment said Shkreli and Greebel, along with others, orchestrated three interrelated fraud schemes from September 2009 through September 2014.
Watch as Shkreli is taken into custody by the FBI:
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