The trouble with putting the ‘most hated man in America’ on trial

AN AMERICAN court has struggled to find an impartial jury for “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli because so many people already hate his guts.

A US court is struggling to arrange a fair trial for the “most hated man in America” because he is already so unpopular with potential jurors.

“Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli gained notoriety when he purchased the rights to a lifesaving drug and increased its price by 5000 per cent. He later made matters worse with a series of strange, boastful social media posts.

Several jurors had to be excused from the fraud trial at a Brooklyn court yesterday, with one calling Shkreli “the face of corporate greed” and another pretending to wring his neck.

When one woman was asked her thoughts on seeing the baby-faced 34-year-old defendant, she replied: “I said in my head, ‘That’s a snake.”’

Former Turing Pharmaceuticals Martin Shkreli, who became known as “Pharma Bro”, arrives for the first day of jury selection in his federal securities fraud trial in New York. Picture: Timothy A. Clary/AFP

‘LIES, DECEIT AND GREED’

Shkreli was arrested in 2015 over a “Ponzi-like” scheme in which he allegedly lied to investors in his hedge fund and stole $15 million from biopharmaceutical company Retrophin Inc to repay them. An FBI official called the securities fraud scheme a “trifecta of lies, deceit and greed.”

But it was separate revelations about Shkreli’s behaviour as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals that incensed the world.

Shkreli drastically hiked the price of Daraprim — a vital drug used to treat parasitic infection toxoplasmosis in patients with HIV and cancer — from $17.80 to almost $1000 per pill.

He then bragged in an email that raising the price per bottle from $1700 to $75,000 was “a very handsome investment” for his firm, according to a memo released by US politicians in February 2016.

“Very good,” he wrote to the chairman of the board. “Nice work as usual. $1bn here we come.”

The drug, which is used on people with low immune systems, costs around $1 to make and is sold for just a few dollars in most countries, including Australia.

In response to the global backlash, the company lowered the cost by 50 per cent for hospitals.

But the drug boss compounded the outrage by appearing consistently unremorseful, taking to social media to defend himself and calling members of Congress “imbeciles” for questioning his behaviour. He was labelled a “morally bankrupt sociopath”, at one point even “giving the finger” to his critics.

Several potential jurors were sent home because they were already biased against the 34-year-old, who has been called ‘a morally bankrupt sociopath’. Picture: Pete Marovich/Bloomberg

‘THERE’S SOMETHING DARK ABOUT HIS LIFE’

Shkreli also boasted about his great wealth, claiming to own a WWII-era Enigma code breaking machine, a Picasso painting, Kurt Cobain’s credit card and valuable unreleased albums by Wu-Tang Clan and Lil Wayne.

As a result, prosecutors last week refused to agree to Shkreli’s request to reduce his bail by $4 million, which he said he needed to pay taxes and legal bills. He is currently on bail for $6.8 million.

He paid $2.6 million for Wu-Tang album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin — on the condition that no one else can ever listen to it without his say-so. “I’m not going to play it for no reason,” he told music news site HipHopDX in an interview that ran a week before his fraud bust. “If Taylor Swift wants to come over and suck my d***, I’ll play it for her.”

Wu-Tang Clan distanced itself from Shkreli, with band member RZA reportedly saying it had given part of the proceeds to charity.

A US patient who was told his medicine costs would rise to $30,000 a month, with only three months covered on insurance, said he hoped Shkreli recognised “that there’s something dark about how he’s been living his life.”

Recently however, it looks like Shkreli has been trying to redeem himself to the public. In April, he offered $40,000 to a Princeton University student who solved a mathematical proof. In May, he pledged on Facebook to pay $100,000 for tips leading to the arrest of the person who killed former Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich.

How is this allowed @jack pic.twitter.com/Wof8MlYHTL

— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) January 8, 2017

‘PUNCH ME IN THE FACE’

The former hedge fund manager has remained bizarrely flippant in the face of widespread dislike, last September auctioning off the opportunity for someone to punch him in the face. The aim was to help the six-year-old son of his late friend Mike Kulich, but critics asked why Shkreli didn’t simply use his personal fortune to help the boy.

In December, a group of Australian high school students outsmarted the 34-year-old, who is worth an estimated $100 million, by recreating the active ingredient used in Daraprim at a fraction of the price.

The Sydney Grammar students created 3.7 grams of the drug used to treat parasitic infections in people with weak immune systems in their school laboratory, to show how “ridiculous” its inflated price was.

Daraprim is listed on the World Health Organisation’s list of essential medicines and costs around $1 to make.

In January, Shkreli was permanently suspended from Twitter for harassing Lauren Duca, an journalist who wrote a popular opinion piece for Teen Vogue criticising Donald Trump, who Shkreli supports. He messaged her requesting she accompany him to Mr Trump’s inauguration, changed his cover photo to images of her and declarations of love and even Photoshopped their faces on to a couple embracing.

Shkreli's company Turing Pharmaceuticals purchased the rights to lifesaving drug Daraprim and increased its price by more than 5000 per cent.

Shkreli’s defence has argued that he had good intentions in siphoning money from the drug company. “Everybody got paid back in this case,” his lawyer said. “Whatever else he did wrong, he ultimately made them whole.”

It has indicated it may highlight Shkreli’s working-class Albanian roots, and how he taught himself chemistry while growing up in Brooklyn and became a rising star of biotech start-ups. Court papers say he wanted to develop new lifesaving drugs after seeing “several classmates and other children he knew struck down by debilitating disease.”

Prosecutors call it a ploy to portray him as someone “in a position to do great things if only the jury would ignore the evidence and base its verdict on sympathy,” calling him a conman often undone by his own words.

The government has cited claims by one of Shkreli’s former employees that Shkreli harassed his family in a dispute over shares of stock. “I hope to see you and your four children homeless and will do whatever I can to assure this,” Mr Shkreli wrote to the employee’s wife, according to court filings.

Opening statements could come as soon as tonight AEST.

— With wires