Martin “pharma bro” Shkreli has apparently been released early from a federal prison in Pennsylvania as revealed in a tweet from friend Edmund Sullivan who picked him up. Shkreli will now serve time in a U.S. Bureau of Prisons halfway house at a secret location in New York.
The disgraced pharmaceutical executive was serving his seven year sentence for securities fraud in Pennsylvania’s Federal Correction Institution, Allenwood Low before his release today. Shkreli was originally arrested in 2015 and was then sentenced in 2018. CNBC reports that this early leave is time off for good behaviour, and Shkreli’s lawyer said that Shkreli is being transferred to a Federal Bureau of Prisons halfway house, and is expected to finish his time there on September 14, 2022. Shkreli confirmed his release from jail in a smarmy Facebook post, saying: “Getting out of real prison is easier than getting out of Twitter prison,” as well as on his friend’s Twitter feed.
“Picked up this guy hitchhiking. Says he’s famous,” Edmund Sullivan said on Twitter, referring to Shkreli in his backseat who was rocking a grey sweatsuit.
In case you missed it, Shkreli was that guy who made headlines in 2015 after hiking up the price of antiparasitic drug Daraprim — which can be used to help those with complications from HIV — from $US13.50 ($19) to $US750 ($1,041) per pill. Shkreli was arrested and charged with securities fraud in December 2015 for defrauding investors, and was found guilty in 2017. In March 2018, he was ordered to forfeit $US7.36 ($10) million in assets (which included his one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album) and was sentenced to seven years later that week. While in prison, Shkreli apparently spent some time in solitary confinement for trying to run a drug company from his cell, and petitioned for a three month furlough from prison in March 2020 because, as a trusted pharmaceutical executive, he could help develop a covid-19 treatment.
Now that Shkreli is one step closer to freedom, what’s next for him since he’s banned from the drug industry for life? Maybe he could get that Wu-Tang album back?