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| Martin Shkreli |
According to ABC news; Calls to an attorney who has represented Shkreli in the past were not
immediately returned. His arrest was confirmed Thursday by FBI spokeswoman Kelly Langmesser.
Shkreli stirred public outrage earlier this fall when his company,
Turing Pharmaceuticals jacked the price of a drug used to treat a
life-threatening infection by more than 5,000 percent. Turing raised the
price on Daraprim, a 62-year-old drug whose patent expired decades ago,
from $13.50 to $750 per pill. The drug is the only approved treatment
for a rare parasitic infection called toxoplasmosis that mainly strikes
pregnant women, cancer patients and AIDS patients.
Shkreli said the company would cut the drug's price. Last month,
however, Turing reneged on its pledge.
Instead, the company is reducing
what it charges hospitals for Daraprim by as much as 50 percent. Most
patients' copayments will be capped at $10 or less a month. But
insurance companies will be stuck with the bulk of the tab, potentially
driving up future treatment and insurance costs.
Turing, with offices in New York and Switzerland, spent $55 million in August for the U.S. rights to sell Daraprim.
The uproar over Turings' pricing actions and similar moves by other
companies helped start government investigations, proposals by
politicians to fight "price gouging," heavy media scrutiny and a drop in
stock prices for biotech companies.
However, the price of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals shares surged from around
$2 to above $40 after the struggling cancer drug developer named
Shkreli chairman and CEO in November. The South San Francisco, California,
company had been winding down operations when Shkreli and the group
swooped in to take control and committed to a $10 million equity
financing facility.
Shares of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc. shed more than half their value,
or $12.56, to $11.03 shortly before markets opened Thursday.
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