Martin Shkreli blames ‘unjust’ arrest on drug price hikes

The pharmaceutical entrepreneur facing US charges of securities fraud said he had been the target of authorities for his drug-price hikes and over-the-top public persona.

Martin Shkreli has been charged for engaging in what US prosecutors said was a Ponzi-like scheme at his former hedge fund MSMB Capital Management and Retrophin, a firm he headed before he took the helm of Turing Pharmaceuticals.

Earlier this year, after buying a 60-year-old drug called Daraprim, Turing raised the price overnight to $750 a tablet from $13.50.

The increase propelled Shkreli to the media spotlight: presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pilloried him for gouging, and he was pulled into congressional drug pricing investigations.

The government charges do not include activities at privately held Turing.

“‘Trying to find anything we could to stop him’ was the attitude of the government,” Shkreli told the Wall Street Journal, saying he was arrested because of a social experiment, and teasing people over the internet, and called the arrest unjust.

According to the newspaper, an FBI official earlier said Shkreli pursued “a securities fraud trifecta of lies, deceit, and greed”.