The controversial former hedge fund manager of MSMB Capital Management, Elea Capital, and MSMB Healthcare, a convicted felon, and pharmaceutical entrepreneur known for raising prices of AIDS drug by 5,000%, Martin Shkreli, is now trying to convince the court to release him to work on the COVID-19 cure.
The biotech entrepreneur has been dubbed as "Pharma Bro" after he bought the rights to an existing drug and increased up the price. While in jail, he co-authored an 11-page paper that examines the efficacy of existing drugs against the virus. In the paper, it explains why Shkreli asked for 'a three-month furlough from his seven-year prison sentence,' which is to work on a COVID-19 cure. He also cited his credentials as a drug industry entrepreneur.
"Medicinal chemists, structural biologists, enzymologists, and assay development and research biology departments at every pharmaceutical company should be put to work until COVID-19 is no more," Shkreli wrote.
In the same paper, he also said, "If the government is willing to reward industry for their work on this catastrophic situation, it will be at each company's discretion to accept, negotiate or deny such funding, including bulk purchases, cost reimbursement, tax credits, and other benefits."
Kevin Mulleady, Vyera Pharmaceuticals CEO, and unindicted co-conspirator of Shkreli's convicted case co-authored the manuscript along with Maureen Lohry and Jason Sommer.
Back in 2018, the biotech entrepreneur, was jailed for looting $ 11 million of stock from his own firm to pay investors in two failed hedge funds he ran. Apart from that, federal and state authorities sued him in February for using unscrupulous tactics to stop his competitors from making versions of Daraprim and raising the cost from $13.50 per pill to $750 (or increasing the price by 5,000%).
He was sentenced to seven years in prison in a Pennsylvania prison, and was set to be released in September 2023. Shkreli's lawyer Benjamin Brafman told The New York Post, "'I have often said that left to his own devices, I believe Martin could cure cancer."
