Ju­ry finds Mar­tin Shkre­li guilty on 3 counts of se­cu­ri­ties fraud — and he's 'de­light­ed'

A ju­ry has found Mar­tin Shkre­li guilty on three of the 8 felony fraud charges he faced, putting the young biotech ex­ec­u­tive in front of a prison sen­tence that could run for years.

Af­ter 5 full days of de­lib­er­a­tions, the ju­ry con­clud­ed that Shkre­li was guilty of two of the se­cu­ri­ties fraud changes and one count of con­spir­a­cy to com­mit fraud.

Ever un­re­pen­tant, Shkre­li will not be throw­ing him­self on the mer­cy of the court. Nev­er one to shy away from self-con­grat­u­la­tions, Shkre­li emerged from the cour­t­house and de­clared a re­sound­ing vic­to­ry.

“I think we’re de­light­ed in many ways with this ver­dict,” he told re­porters. The case against him was an “epic witch hunt” and all the pros­e­cu­tors did was find some old broom­sticks. The key, as far as he and de­fense at­tor­ney Ben Braf­man were con­cerned, was get­ting off on count 7 re­lat­ed to loot­ing Retrophin of mil­lions.

“I think we would love to have a com­plete sweep but 5 out of 8 counts not guilty is in our view a very good ver­dict,” said Braf­man. The case, he added, was made dif­fi­cult by an­ti-Shkre­li sen­ti­ment, but he sound­ed con­fi­dent that Shkre­li will be let off with a “very le­nient” sen­tence.

Shkre­li head­ed straight to his lap­top and a ren­dezvous with his fol­low­ers on YouTube. And he quick­ly scoffed at the idea that he would get more than a year-long sen­tence in prison.

“Those pun­ish­ments are go­ing to be close to nil,” he said about be­ing con­vict­ed of ly­ing to in­vestors, af­ter re­view­ing the sen­tenc­ing guide­lines. “You can add up all the points of an of­fense and de­ter­mine what the pun­ish­ment would be.” Prison sen­tences are di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to fi­nan­cial loss, he added. “My in­vestors didn’t lose any mon­ey, they tripled their mon­ey.”

And: “No jail time would be def­i­nite­ly ide­al. If the charges stand it’s pos­si­ble it’s a 6 month or a one-year sen­tence.” A few months in “Club Fed,” he boast­ed, and he would be back on the streets.

Shkre­li faced 8 counts ac­cus­ing him of de­fraud­ing in­vestors in his hedge funds, then pay­ing them back with stock he loot­ed from Retrophin, a biotech com­pa­ny he found­ed. Some of those in­vestors were al­so hand­ed pho­ny con­sult­ing agree­ments to help cov­er his moves, ac­cord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors.

Shkre­li be­came a wide­ly hat­ed poster child for phar­ma greed af­ter rais­ing the price of an old, cheap drug he bought by more than 5000%. But while it proved loath­some to mil­lions, and a wide va­ri­ety of law­mak­ers in both par­ties, there’s no law against it in the US.

In fact, Shkre­li still owns a big chunk of Tur­ing, which in turn sells dara­prim. He re­cent­ly fend­ed off an at­tempt­ed board coup, lin­ing up the elec­tion of a slate of new di­rec­tors with whom he has close ties.

For much of the past two years Shkre­li has mocked and taunt­ed jour­nal­ists who cov­ered his sto­ry, as well as a le­gion of crit­ics who took pot shots at him on the so­cial me­dia out­lets he avid­ly em­ployed. Shkre­li was re­cent­ly banned from Twit­ter, though, and won’t have much ac­cess to his on­line streams on YouTube if he winds up in jail.

Shkre­li has re­peat­ed­ly tried to get back on to Twit­ter af­ter they re­peat­ed­ly blocked ear­li­er at­tempts. This evening, his lat­est stab@SamThe­ManTP  went down abrupt­ly, blocked af­ter he used it to de­fend his con­vic­tion as a win.


Im­age: Mar­tin Shkre­li right af­ter his ver­dict was an­nounced. Cred­it: Get­ty

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End­points 20(+2) un­der 40, 2023; Bio­phar­ma's high­est-paid CEOs; N-of-1 CRISPR sto­ry goes on af­ter tragedy; and more

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

We will be off Monday in observance of Memorial Day — and when we get back, it will be a straight march to ASCO, BIO and more. Enjoy the (long) weekend!

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Bio­phar­ma's 20 high­est-paid CEOs of 2022, each bring­ing in $20M+ pay­days

Even in a down year for much of the biopharma market, 20 CEOs brought in pay packages valued at more than $20 million, an Endpoints News analysis found.

Endpoints collected data on more than 350 CEO compensation packages, covering a wide range of pharma, biotech, and life sciences companies. All told, the 20 largest earners made over $725 million in 2022 — an average package of $36.4 million. Three brought in paydays over $50 million, and one CEO broke the $100 million mark.

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Rich Horgan (R) with his late brother, Terry

Rich Hor­gan spear­head­ed a gene ther­a­py for his broth­er. The tri­al end­ed in tragedy, but the work con­tin­ues for more pa­tients

Rich Horgan’s quest to create a custom gene therapy for his brother, Terry, ended in tragedy. But Horgan doesn’t believe it’s the end of the story.

Terry, a 27-year-old patient with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last October just eight days after receiving the therapy in a clinical trial in which he was the only participant. The case raised questions about the safety of certain gene therapies and what would happen to other drug programs under a nonprofit that Horgan created, called Cure Rare Disease.

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Douglas Love, Annexon CEO

An­nex­on’s GA drug miss­es on pri­ma­ry goal but win on vi­su­al acu­ity will be fo­cus of planned late-stage tri­al

Annexon’s complement inhibitor didn’t prove better than sham at reducing lesion growth in a leading cause of blindness, but the biotech still plans to move forward on the back of secondary endpoints showing visual acuity preservation, which will “certainly” be the primary goal in a late-stage trial to be discussed shortly with the FDA, CEO Douglas Love told Endpoints News. 

The California biotech’s ANX007 was not statistically significant compared to pooled sham, the comparator, at 12 months in patients with geographic atrophy, per a Wednesday presentation. In every-month dosing, the GA lesion area changed about 6.2% from baseline (p=0.526) and 1.3% (p=0.896) in the every-other-month group. In a March note, Jefferies analyst Suji Jeong said a reduction of 20% to 30% would be “encouraging.”

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The 20(+2) un­der 40: Your guide to the next gen­er­a­tion of biotech lead­ers

This year’s list of 20 biotech leaders under the age of 40 includes a huge range of ambitions. Some of our honorees are planning to create the next big drug giant. Others are pushing the bounds of AI. One is working to revolutionize TB testing. All are compelling talents who are still young in age, but already far along in achievement.

And, as in years past, we went over. The 20 are actually 22 because of two double profiles that reflect how important teamwork is in the industry. As one of our honorees, Joe Illingworth of DJS Antibodies, told me in our interview, “It takes a village to raise a biotech.”

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FDA ap­proves Lex­i­con’s heart-fail­ure drug af­ter de­feat in di­a­betes

The FDA on Friday approved Lexicon’s heart failure drug sotagliflozin following a string of setbacks for the pharma company, including an FDA rejection in diabetes and the loss of a development deal with Sanofi.

The dual SGLT1 and SGLT2 inhibitor will be marketed as Inpefa and is a once-daily tablet. It’s been approved to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and heart failure-related hospitalization or urgent visits in adults with heart failure or type 2 diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, and other cardiovascular risk factors. The label spans the range of left ventricular ejection fraction, including preserved ejection fraction and reduced ejection fraction, as well as patients with or without diabetes, Lexicon said Friday.

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Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion to re­ceive few­er Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vac­cine dos­es un­der amend­ed con­tract

The European Commission has made a few changes to its vaccine contract with Pfizer and BioNTech, reducing the dose volume while extending the delivery timeline to cope with “evolving public health needs.”

The Commission previously struck a contract in May 2021 for 900 million doses, with the option to purchase another 900 million. Of those, 450 million were expected to be delivered in 2023, though an amendment now calls for fewer doses. While neither the Commission nor Pfizer and BioNTech have revealed an exact amount, an unnamed source told Reuters that the amendment reduces the remaining expected doses by about a third.

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Teresa Bitetti, Takeda's president of the global oncology business unit

Take­da wins pri­or­i­ty re­view for $400M col­orec­tal can­cer drug, li­censed from Hutchmed in Jan­u­ary

Takeda and Hutchmed scored a priority review Thursday afternoon for a colorectal cancer drug, the companies announced.

The experimental drug in question is fruquintinib, previously approved in China in 2018 to treat metastatic colorectal cancer. Takeda and Hutchmed are aiming to bring fruquintinib to the US and other countries outside China in the same indication, and the FDA set its decision date for Nov. 30 of this year.

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