Disgraced pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli wants out of prison to help research a treatment for COVID-19, but federal prosecutors want him to remain behind bars for the duration of his sentence for fraud.
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Disgraced pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli wants out of prison to help research a treatment for COVID-19, but federal prosecutors want him to remain behind bars for the duration of his sentence for fraud.
Earlier this month, Shkreli and his attorney filed an appeal with the courts for a three-month furlough from prison to help research a potential treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that has infected more than 1,500 inmates in the federal prison system. According to reports, as of Tuesday there were no confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the Allenwood Low prison where Shkreli is serving his sentence. This week, U.S. attorneys filed a motion in the Eastern District of New York asking for a judge to reject Shkreli’s plea.
“Shkreli has no formal scientific training and no experience working [in] a laboratory setting, and he does not explain why he cannot continue to develop and discuss any ideas he may have about COVID-19 from prison, as he has,” prosecutors wrote in their motion to U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, ABC reported late Wednesday. Matsumoto is the judge who sentenced Shkreli on charges of securities fraud and one charge of conspiracy to commit conspiracy fraud.
Shkreli first proposed his furlough earlier this month in a published scientific paper he co-authored. In a plea written at the end of the paper, Shkreli argued that the pharmaceutical industry has had an inadequate response to the threat of COVID-19 – despite the countless known clinical and preclinical studies assessing various treatment options and vaccine candidates. Shkreli said the industry has “a large braintrust of talent” that is not working on the COVID-19 problem due to a deprioritization of infectious disease research across the pharmaceutical landscape. All biopharmaceutical companies should be responding with all resources to combat this health emergency, he argued in his public appeal.
In his multi-paragraph appeal, Shkreli said he was requesting three months and noted that someone with his credentials should not be excluded from helping develop a treatment for the disease. He said he is a “successful two-time biopharma entrepreneur” who has not only purchased multiple companies but has also “invented multiple new drug candidates,” and also filed Investigational New Drug Applications and applications for clinical trials.
In their response to Shkreli, the prosecutors scoffed at his claims, calling him delusional and pointed out that Shkreli’s notorious history for jacking up the price of affordable medications, such as the 5,000% price hike for the toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim and his follow-up laments that he didn’t increase the price even higher.
“Even if Shkreli were somehow able to develop a potential cure, there is no evidence that he would, in fact, use it to ‘contribute to the betterment of society,’ as he claims, rather than to enrich himself to the maximum extent possible, including by concealing his work or declining to provide such a cure to others unless he were paid an exorbitant sum,” the prosecution wrote in their motion, according to ABC. “As the evidence at trial demonstrated, Shkreli’s involvement in the search for cures to diseases was primarily motivated by the potential to make tremendous profits.”
The federal prosecutors further argued that if Shkreli were temporarily released, he would be exposed to COVID-19 and could potentially bring that back into prison and expose other inmates and staff.
