A Brooklyn federal judge dismissed the tearful plea for mercy from “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli and sentenced him Friday to seven years in prison for defrauding investors.
Shkreli, a snarky social media maven who got his nickname after he infamously tried to squeeze AIDS patients by jacking up the price of a life-saving drug, wept as he apologized to the investors.
“This is my fault,” he said. “I am not the victim here… Please give me a chance to show what I’m capable of.”
But Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, who had the court officer pass Shkreli a box of tissues at one point, was unmoved by his pleading, although the sentence she handed out was far less than the 15 years prosecutors had been seeking.
Minutes later, Shkreli was marched out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
It was an ignominious turn for the fallen entrepreneur, whose attorney had asked Matsumoto to limit his prison sentence to 12 to 18 months.
Defense lawyer Benjamin Brafman has already announced his intention to appeal the conviction.
Shkreli, 34, was convicted of bilking backers of the hedge fund he ran and of fraud in connection with the manipulation of stock shares in Retrophin, which was one of his drug companies.
In arguing for a reduced sentence, Brafman argued that none of Shkreli’s investors ultimately lost any money and that he never personally benefited from his actions.
Prosecutors, however, contended Shkreli caused anywhere from $9 million to $20 million in losses — and Matsumoto agreed.
On Monday, she ordered the forfeiture of some $7.36 million in Shkreli’s assets, including the one-of-kind Wu-Tang Clan album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” that he bought at an auction for $2 million.
When Shkreli was convicted last summer, he boasted that he would probably spent less than a year at “Club Fed,” a cushy minimum-security facility where he could play tennis and Xbox. He got his nickname after posting a photo of himself on Twitter in sunglasses and mimicking a pose from a Flo Rida music video.
But Shkreli quickly found himself behind bars at a tough federal lockup when a judge revoked his bail for offering his Facebook followers $5,000 to pluck a hair off Hillary Clinton’s head during her book tour.
The self-styled Wall Street bad boy said it was a joke. But the judge said he was a threat and tossed him into the Brooklyn Metropolitan Correction Center to live among mobsters, drug smugglers and terror suspects while awaiting sentencing.
In court on Friday, a contrite Shkreli told his family not to worry about him and said he was embarrassed and ashamed.
“I was never motivated by money,” he said, his voice cracking. “I was trying to grow my stature and reputation.”
Shkreli insisted he was “not the same person” he was when he was running the MSMB Capital Management hedge fund.
“I’m here because of the gross, stupid, negligent mistakes I made at MSMB,” he said. “This would be a good time to apologize to all the investors of MSMB… I’m terribly sorry I lost your trust. You deserve better.”
Shkreli, speaking of himself in the third person, also said he had nobody to blame but himself.
“There was no government conspiracy to take Martin Shkreli down,” he said. “I took down Martin Shkreli.”