Martin Shkreli was a man in business.
He made a lot of money. But he also made a very big mistake. He made medicine cost too much. This was not fair to people. Many people were very angry. Do you think that is fair?
Martin Shkreli was a man in business.
He grew up in New York. His parents moved there from a place called Albania. He worked with money for many years.
Later, he started a company for medicine. He bought a drug used to treat sick people. Then, he made the price of that drug very high.
This made many people very angry. They thought it was not fair. Because of this, he went to court. He had to go to prison for a few years.
Now, he is not allowed to lead big companies. He is a man people remember for his choices.
Martin Shkreli is an American businessman.
He was born in Brooklyn, New York. His parents moved to the United States from Albania. They worked as janitors. Shkreli studied business at Baruch College. He started working with money when he was very young. He ran several hedge funds. These are companies that invest money to make more money.
In 2015, Shkreli started a new company called Turing Pharmaceuticals. Turing bought a drug named Daraprim. This drug helps people with certain illnesses. Shkreli raised the price of one pill from $13.50 to $750.00. This made many people very angry. Many leaders in the United States spoke out against him. They thought the high price was unfair.
Shkreli also faced legal trouble for how he handled money. In 2017, a court found him guilty of fraud. He was sent to prison for seven years. He was also ordered to pay many millions of dollars in fines. In 2022, he was released from prison early. He is now banned from being a leader of any public company.
Martin Shkreli is an American businessman and investor.
He was born on March 17, 1983, in Brooklyn, New York. His parents moved to the United States from Albania to work as janitors. Shkreli grew up in a working-class community in Sheepshead Bay. He attended Hunter College High School and later Baruch College. He earned a degree in business administration in 2004. He even began an internship on Wall Street when he was only 17 years old.
Shkreli spent much of his career running hedge funds. These are companies that invest money to try to make more money. He co-founded several funds, including Elea Capital and MSMB Capital Management. In 2009, he started MSMB Capital with a childhood friend named Marek Biestek. They often focused on biotech companies, which are businesses that study biology and medicine. Shkreli used a method called short-selling to make money. This involves betting that a company's stock price will go down.
In 2011, Shkreli founded a company called Retrophin. The name comes from combining words related to biology. He ran Retrophin to find treatments for rare diseases. He was even named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2012. However, the company's board decided to replace him as leader in 2014. After he left, Retrophin faced legal disputes with him. Eventually, the company changed its name to Travere Therapeutics Inc. to move away from his reputation.
In 2015, Shkreli started Turing Pharmaceuticals. His plan was to buy medicines that were already made. These medicines were often out-of-patent, meaning other companies could not easily make them. One such drug was called Daraprim. It helps treat people with certain infections. Turing bought Daraprim for $55 million from Impax Laboratories. Shortly after, Shkreli raised the price of one pill from $13.50 to $750.00. This sudden change caused a huge scandal around the world.
Many people and leaders were very angry about the price hike. They felt it was unfair to patients who needed the medicine. Shkreli also faced serious legal trouble for how he handled money in his other businesses. In 2017, a federal court found him guilty of securities fraud and conspiracy. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. He was also ordered to pay millions of dollars in fines. He was released from prison early in May 2022. Now, he is banned from being an officer of any public company.
Martin Shkreli is an American investor and businessman known for his work in finance and pharmaceuticals.
He was born on March 17, 1983, at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Roman Catholic immigrants from Albania who worked as janitors. Shkreli grew up in the working-class community of Sheepshead Bay. He attended Hunter College High School and later earned a degree in business administration from Baruch College in 2004. His interest in chemistry began after a family member suffered from treatment-resistant depression.
Shkreli's career began in the world of finance through hedge funds. A hedge fund is an investment company that uses various strategies to earn profits for its investors. At age 17, he held an internship at the Wall Street firm Cramer, Berkowitz and Company. During this time, he recommended short-selling the stock of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. Short-selling is a method where an investor bets that a company's stock price will fall. When the price dropped, the fund profited, though the Securities and Exchange Commission later investigated Shkreli's knowledge of the stock.
After working as a financial analyst, Shkreli founded several of his own funds. In 2006, he started Elea Capital Management. In 2007, Lehman Brothers sued Elea for failing to cover a "put option transaction." This happened because Shkreli bet on a market decline, but stocks rose instead. In 2009, he and Marek Biestek founded MSMB Capital Management. The two men often shorted biotech companies, which are businesses focused on biology and medicine. In 2011, a massive trade involving Orexigen Therapeutics stock left MSMB Capital nearly wiped out after Merrill Lynch lost $7 million on the trade.
In 2011, Shkreli moved into the pharmaceutical industry by founding Retrophin. The name Retrophin is a portmanteau, which is a word made by joining two other words. He led the company with a focus on creating treatments for rare diseases. In 2012, Forbes included him in their "30 Under 30" list. However, the company's board replaced him as CEO in 2014. After his departure, Retrophin filed a $65 million lawsuit against him. The company eventually rebranded as Travere Therapeutics Inc. to distance itself from his reputation.
In 2015, Shkreli founded Turing Pharmaceuticals with a specific business strategy. He aimed to acquire licenses for out-of-patent medicines. These are drugs whose legal protections have expired, meaning other companies can usually make them. However, Turing focused on drugs with small markets where competition was low. By using closed distribution, Turing could control who bought the medicine. This allowed the company to raise prices significantly without facing competition from generic manufacturers.
This strategy led to a major global scandal involving the drug Daraprim. Daraprim is an antiparasitic medication used to treat toxoplasmosis, often in patients with AIDS. In August 2015, Turing purchased Daraprim from Impax Laboratories for $55 million. Immediately after the acquisition, Shkreli raised the price from $13.50 to $750.00 per pill. This was a price increase of 56 times the original cost. The move was criticized by medical organizations, patient groups, and political leaders like Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump.
Shkreli defended the decision by comparing it to selling an expensive car at a low price. He argued that patient co-pays would remain low and that Turing had expanded free drug programs. Despite this, the controversy caused many organizations to demand the price be lowered. In 2017, Shkreli faced legal consequences for his actions in other businesses. A federal court convicted him on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and faced millions of dollars in fines.
Shkreli's legal troubles also included civil antitrust cases. In these cases, he was ordered to pay $64.6 million to be repaid to victims. He was released early from a federal prison in Pennsylvania in May 2022. Currently, he is permanently banned from serving as an officer for any publicly traded company. His career serves as a significant example of the complex relationship between pharmaceutical pricing, patent laws, and financial regulation.
Where will your curiosity go next?
🖼️ Images & Media (1)
More to explore
✨ What else?
Related topics you might enjoy
🪜 Step back
Simpler topics to build understanding
What is Nepedia?
A free, ad-free encyclopedia for children. Every article is written at five reading levels, so the same page works for a five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old — use the level switcher above to see this one change. No account needed to read.