The Ring of Fire
Last week, Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli was sentenced to 7 years in prison for securities fraud. We’ll talk about that sentence in a minute, but before we do, let’s focus on the fact that he is going to prison for scamming RICH PEOPLE, and not for scamming millions of people by raising the price of an AIDS drug from $13 dollars to $750 dollars. So ripping off average consumers is ok – but ripping off rich people will get you thrown in jail. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Peter Mougey discuss this.
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Last week, Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud. We'll talk about that sentence in a minute but before we do, let's focus on the fact that he was going to prison not because of what he did in raising the price of drugs from $13 to $750 for an AIDS drug, he went to prison because he was ripping off rich people. Didn't matter that he was ripping off the average consumer, that's okay. We'll talk about that. But ripping off rich people in Ponzi scams, well, that's really ... People misunderstand why he was sentenced.
Peter, one reason he was sentenced is because the guy has such a horrendous personality. Think about this. When you look at the transcript, you follow this story, the defense lawyer had to stand up in front of the judge during sentencing and say "Yes, Judge. This guy is a horrendous character. Most of the time, I want to punch him in the face. Every now and then, I want to hug him but I want to punch him in the face because he, A, has some type of social dysfunction, B, he believes he's an intellectual giant. He tries to send out the message that he's an intellectual giant and understand bioscience really well, better than anybody else, he's the smartest guy in the room. C, yes, he's done some terrible things like telling his 70,000 followers that if you bring me a clip of Hillary Clinton's hair, I'm going to give you $5,000-"
That's what landed him in jail to start off with.
Exact-
I mean, he's crazy.
We'll talk about that. This is complicated for a lot of reasons. But really, the way this lands, the way this really lands, is that he was sentenced because he stole from rich people, not because he-
I mean, here's the message of this sentence. The message sends, if you're going to price gouge, you can price gouge on schizophrenics, you can price gouge on AIDS patients. Here, he ran the price of the drug from $13.50 to $750. That didn't land him in jail, that didn't land him in trouble. What landed him in trouble was that he took money from one company and put it into another at the expense of his shareholders. That's what landed him in jail coupled with his personality defect that he was laughing at the court, laughing at the judge, making a mockery of the system. I think he just irritated everyone to no end, including his own lawyer, and that's what landed him in jail.
11 месяцев назад
