Here’s something that might get “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli to stop crying: He’s going going to jail a very rich man. Shkreli is still worth tens of millions of dollars even after his sentencing Friday, in which a New York federal judge sent him to prison for seven years.
Shkreli’s net worth has been of great intrigue ever since he gained notoriety for raising the price of an HIV drug by more than 5,000% in 2015, when Shkreli was CEO of pharma company Turing Pharmaceuticals. Vilified by patients and lawmakers alike, Shkreli continued to spend his pharma profits lavishly, such as when he spent $2 million on a Wu-Tang Clan album just months after the drug scandal. Shkreli was then arrested for securities fraud in December 2015, which promoted a partial glimpse of his net worth, including a $45 million brokerage account at E*Trade.
Even after spending some of that on years of legal fees—Shkreli was convicted last summer on three counts of fraud relating to his former investment firm MSMB Capital—Shkreli still has plenty in the bank, federal prosecutors showed. That’s why, prosecutors argued, Shkreli should have no trouble paying the nearly $7.4 million in assets the judge ordered Shkreli to forfeit this week, including the Wu-Tang album, a Picasso painting, and the $5 million he still has left in that E*Trade account.
Indeed, those assets make up just a fraction of Shkreli’s overall wealth: Martin Shkreli’s net worth is more than $27.1 million, according to court filings leading up to his sentencing. And Shkreli’s worth that much even after accounting for “outstanding federal and state tax liabilities, judgments and legal fees,” the legal documents showed.
“It is not in dispute that he has the ability to pay a fine, nor has he demonstrated that the payment of a fine would be a burden,” federal prosecutors said in their recommendation for Shkreli’s sentencing earlier this week. “Indeed, Shkreli’s pre-trial claims of impoverishment—in a gambit to lower his bail in the spring of 2016—were finally put to rest,” they added.
Shkreli’s lawyers have on several occasions since his arrest sought to downplay his wealth, including when they sought, unsuccessfully to reduce his $5 million bail. That bail was later revoked last fall when Shkreli put a bounty on a strand of Hillary Clinton’s hair. And earlier this year, Shkreli’s counsel tried to lower the sum he would be required to forfeit.
