Attorney Evan Greebel has been convicted in a Brooklyn court of conspiring with fallen pharma executive Martin Shkreli to defraud investors.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Greebel was convicted of conspiring to commit wire fraud and securities fraud. Wire fraud carries a possible sentence of 20 years in prison, and nearly 90% of those convicted of securities fraud in 2015 did an average of more than four years of prison time.
That means Greebel could end up rubbing shoulders with his former boss. Shkreli is currently awaiting sentencing following his August conviction in the same scheme. In that case, Shkreli was found to have used assets from biopharma company Retrophin to hide losses in separate hedge funds he ran.
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Greebel was found to have helped engineer the scheme while acting as outside counsel to Retrophin, and Retrophin leadership testified that he put Shkreli’s interests ahead of the company’s. Defense witnesses countered that Greebel was taken for a ride by a difficult client.
The fraud charges were unrelated to Shkreli’s notorious decision to massively increase the price of a malaria drug. That decision made Shkreli into something of a real-life supervillain, a role he seemed to relish. Before his incarceration, Shkreli was openly critical of pop star Taylor Swift and started a petty feud with the rap outfit Wu-Tang Clan after spending $2 million on an exclusive album from the rap group.
Perhaps Shkreli’s shenanigans painted a target on his back—and, by extension, Greebel’s. It appears none of Shkreli’s hedge fund investors actually lost money in the end, but he was so widely reviled by the time of his trial that it was difficult to find an unbiased jury to hear the case.
