Martin Shkreli

Martin Shkreli (/ˈʃkrɛli/; born March 17, 1983) is an American investor and businessman. Shkreli is the co-founder of the hedge funds Elea Capital, MSMB Capital Management, and MSMB Healthcare, the co-founder and former CEO of pharmaceutical firms Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals, and the former CEO of start-up software company Gödel Systems, which he founded in August 2016.

In September 2015, Shkreli was widely criticized when Turing obtained the manufacturing license for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim and raised its price to insurance companies from $13.50 to $750.00 (USD) per pill.

In 2017, Shkreli was convicted in federal court on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and up to $7.4 million in fines. In the civil antitrust case, Shkreli was fined a further $64.6 million to be repaid to victims. In May 2022, he was released early from the low-security federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania. He is permanently banned from serving as an officer of any publicly traded company.

Shkreli was born in Coney Island Hospital in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on March 17, 1983. His parents were Roman Catholic Albanians, and he said his religion has been "a guiding post" for him, although he does not believe in God. His parents emigrated to the United States from Albania and worked as janitors. His family descend from the Shkreli tribe in Albania. His two sisters and his brother grew up in a working-class community in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Shkreli was raised Catholic and attended Sunday school as a child. Shkreli attended Hunter College High School. Sources differ on whether Shkreli graduated from Hunter or whether he was expelled before his senior year and received the credits necessary for his high school diploma through City-As-School High School. He ended up in a program that placed him in an internship at Wall Street hedge fund Cramer, Berkowitz and Company when he was 17. Shkreli received a bachelor's degree in business administration from Baruch College in 2004.

Shkreli told Vanity Fair that he developed an interest in chemistry when a family member suffered from treatment-resistant depression.

During Shkreli's time at Cramer, Berkowitz and Company, he recommended short-selling the stock of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company testing a weight-loss drug. When its price dropped in accordance with Shkreli's prediction, Cramer's hedge fund profited. Shkreli's prediction drew the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which investigated Shkreli's knowledge about the stock but was unable to prove wrongdoing on his part.

After four years as an associate at Cramer Berkowitz, Shkreli worked as a financial analyst for Intrepid Capital Management and UBS Wealth Management. He then started his first hedge fund, Elea Capital Management, in 2006. In 2007, Lehman Brothers sued Elea in New York state court for failing to cover a 'put option transaction' in which Shkreli bet the wrong way on a broad market decline. When stocks rose, Shkreli did not have the money to cover his losses. In October 2007, Lehman Brothers won a $2.3 million default judgment against Shkreli and Elea, but Lehman collapsed before it could collect on the ruling.

In September 2009, Shkreli and a childhood friend Marek Biestek started MSMB Capital Management, which took its name from the initials of the two. Shkreli and Biestek shorted biotech companies, then described flaws in the companies on stock trading chat rooms.