Martin Shkreli's bad month continues. After being arrested last week on charges of securities fraud, the infamous Shkreli — who came to public attention when he raised the price of drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill — has been fired from his position as CEO of pharmaceutical company KaloBios. The company says it sacked Shkreli on December 17th, the same day that he was arrested for allegedly misappropriating money to pay off debts at his previous companies, and shortly before he resigned from his position as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals on December 18th.
Shkreli became CEO of KaloBios on November 19th after acquiring 70 percent of the company's outstanding shares. He planned to pull a similar trick at his new company that he did at Turing Pharmaceuticals, getting the license for a standard treatment — in this case for a parasitic infection called Chagas disease — and jacking up its price from a few hundred dollars for a course to almost $100,000 for 12 weeks. Shkreli has been joined on his way out of the door by Tony Chase, who stepped onto KaloBios' board with him in November, but it's not clear whether the San Francisco-based drug maker will go ahead with its plan to hike the price of its treatment.
KaloBios was set to hike the price of another drug from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of dollars
Shkreli was publicly pilloried for his decision to inflate the price of standard drugs to obscene levels, but has been unrepentant, taking to the internet to respond to critics, document his wealth, and flaunt his $2 million purchase of the Wu-Tang Clan's one-of-a-kind Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album on Twitch live stream. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Shkreli complained that his arrest was unjust, and that the government was "trying to find anything [it] could to stop him," seizing on his internet "social experiments" as justification.
But with his cash gone, his companies severing ties, and any sympathy long ago torpedoed, Shkreli might have trouble finding supporters in his argument. At least he might have time to listen to his expensive album now — the charges of securities fraud leveled against Shkreli could land him up to 20 years in prison