Prison bars apparently can’t stop Martin Shkreli from being a pharmadouche.
The convicted criminal has reportedly been thrown in solitary confinement following accusations that he was still running his sketchy company from prison using a contraband cell phone.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on Shkreli’s alleged business dealings last month. According to the publication, Shkreli has been utilizing a smuggled cell phone to operate a company not unlike his Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, which gained notoriety for price-gouging drugs used by AIDS and cancer patients.
News of Shkreli’s solitary confinement placement comes from Justin Liverman, a fellow inmate at New Jersey’s Fort Dix prison. “Martin is in the SHU,” Liverman asserted in an email to Forbes, referring to solitary confinement’s other known name as the Special Housing Unit. Forbes, which has been exchanging correspondence with Liverman for the last three months, added that Shkreli was still in solitary confinement “as of Sunday [March 31st].”
The Bureau of Prisons has refused to comment on Shkreli’s current prison status, per Forbes; however, it did confirm that the concerns raised by The Wall Street Journal article were actively being investigated.
In August 2017, Shkreli was convicted on three of the eight charges brought against him by federal prosecutors, which included securities fraud and conspiracy to commit both securities fraud and wire fraud. Prosecutors accused Shkreli of taking stock from his biotechnology firm Retrophin and using it to pay off debts from unrelated business dealings.
Shkreli was handed a seven-year prison sentence and was also ordered to forfeit more than $7.3 million in personal assets, including his one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which he purchased in 2015 for $2 million.
