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I mean, everybody came out okay - Shkreli really made his investors a lot of money! Yeah, he lied, but he did some incredible work: typical fraudsters take your

by huac 9y ago

I mean, everybody came out okay - Shkreli really made his investors a lot of money! Yeah, he lied, but he did some incredible work: typical fraudsters take your money and run - he doesn't fit that mold. Honestly, the issue was that he's an utter asshole, including to his investors. Investors are willing to put with a lot if you triple their money, but Shkreli managed to cross that line. That made him an easy target for the prescription drugs investigation and media circus.

Harimwakairi 9y ago
> ...he did some incredible work... Can you elaborate on this?
- yellowstuff 9y ago
  He pivoted from running a hedge fund worth -33 cents to creating a pharmaceutical company currently worth $800 million.
rifung 9y ago
> I mean, everybody came out okay - Shkreli really made his investors a lot of money! Yeah, he lied, but he did some incredible work: typical fraudsters take your money and run - he doesn't fit that mold. I think it's nice everyone came out okay, besides Shkreli in this case I guess. I still think what he did was wrong though because if you don't punish that kind of behavior, then you're encouraging people to do things that are wrong in the hopes they will succeed, and it won't always work out as it happened to do so here.
blahblah3 9y ago
Just because his investors made money doesn't excuse him. Suppose you lent 10,000 to a friend and the friend promised to return it within a year. A year later, your friend doesn't pay you back and makes a bunch of excuses. Instead, he takes the 5,000 he has left to the casino, gambles it on the roulette wheel and by luck manages to turn that into 30,000 and pays you back 1.5 years later. I don't think you would be happy with that situation...
- benesch 9y ago
  You might find FedEx's origin story interesting. > “I asked Fred where the funds had come from, and he responded, ‘The meeting with the General Dynamics board was a bust and I knew we needed money for Monday, so I took a plane to Las Vegas and won $27,000.’ I said, ‘You mean you took our last $5,000— how could you do that?’ He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘What difference does it make? Without the funds for the fuel companies, we couldn’t have flown anyway.’ Fred’s luck held again. It was not much, but it came at a critical time and kept us in business for another week.” [0] [0]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/fred-smith-blackjack-fedex_n_1966837.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/fred-smith-blackjac...
  - pm90 9y ago
    Technically, Fred committed a fraud (actually I forget the technical term for the crime where you misuse funds). Its just that he wasn't prosecuted for it.
    - jetti 9y ago
      Could you be thinking of Misappropriation of funds? I'm not a lawyer and I haven't spent a lot of time looking it up but from the few places I looked it doesn't seem that it would fit.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- Clubber 9y ago
  Honestly, I would be thrilled to triple my money in 18 months. Using the gambling analogy is disingenuous though.
  - singhrac 9y ago
    I don't see why it's disingenuous? Investing is extremely risky, and I'm not convinced that he didn't just get lucky on the second bet. This isn't ok because the original investor was paid off. That's also how Ponzi schemes work - the original investors are paid off (I know, here the money seems to be generated from Retrophin, but the behavior is the same). This gave me a perspective: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-12-17/martin-shkreli-accused-of-being-surprisingly-good-at-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-12-17/martin-sh...
sehugg 9y ago
He started his career as a short seller that defrauded banks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli#MSMB_Capital_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli#MSMB_Capital_Ma...
BinaryIdiot 9y ago
> typical fraudsters take your money and run - he doesn't fit that mold. So if everything happened identically but he failed to make them money _then_ it would be bad? I don't understand.
pm90 9y ago
The law is very clear on what is a crime and what isn't. So when he misused his funds, he committed a crime. And he was prosecuted and convicted for it. Doesn't matter if in the end he cured cancer: he still committed a crime. I have a feeling that since most people have never dealt with the justice system, they fail to appreciate just how black and white it really is. While the movies/TV do portray cases where "extenuating circumstances" help the case, most cases are pretty straightforward.

by huac 9y ago

Harimwakairi 9y ago

> ...he did some incredible work... Can you elaborate on this?

yellowstuff 9y ago
He pivoted from running a hedge fund worth -33 cents to creating a pharmaceutical company currently worth $800 million.

rifung 9y ago

> I mean, everybody came out okay - Shkreli really made his investors a lot of money! Yeah, he lied, but he did some incredible work: typical fraudsters take your money and run - he doesn't fit that mold. I think it's nice everyone came out okay, besides Shkreli in this case I guess. I still think what he did was wrong though because if you don't punish that kind of behavior, then you're encouraging people to do things that are wrong in the hopes they will succeed, and it won't always work out as it happened to do so here.

blahblah3 9y ago

Just because his investors made money doesn't excuse him. Suppose you lent 10,000 to a friend and the friend promised to return it within a year. A year later, your friend doesn't pay you back and makes a bunch of excuses. Instead, he takes the 5,000 he has left to the casino, gambles it on the roulette wheel and by luck manages to turn that into 30,000 and pays you back 1.5 years later. I don't think you would be happy with that situation...

benesch 9y ago
You might find FedEx's origin story interesting. > “I asked Fred where the funds had come from, and he responded, ‘The meeting with the General Dynamics board was a bust and I knew we needed money for Monday, so I took a plane to Las Vegas and won $27,000.’ I said, ‘You mean you took our last $5,000— how could you do that?’ He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘What difference does it make? Without the funds for the fuel companies, we couldn’t have flown anyway.’ Fred’s luck held again. It was not much, but it came at a critical time and kept us in business for another week.” [0] [0]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/fred-smith-blackjack-fedex_n_1966837.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/fred-smith-blackjac...
- pm90 9y ago
  Technically, Fred committed a fraud (actually I forget the technical term for the crime where you misuse funds). Its just that he wasn't prosecuted for it.
  - jetti 9y ago
    Could you be thinking of Misappropriation of funds? I'm not a lawyer and I haven't spent a lot of time looking it up but from the few places I looked it doesn't seem that it would fit.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
Clubber 9y ago
Honestly, I would be thrilled to triple my money in 18 months. Using the gambling analogy is disingenuous though.
- singhrac 9y ago
  I don't see why it's disingenuous? Investing is extremely risky, and I'm not convinced that he didn't just get lucky on the second bet. This isn't ok because the original investor was paid off. That's also how Ponzi schemes work - the original investors are paid off (I know, here the money seems to be generated from Retrophin, but the behavior is the same). This gave me a perspective: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-12-17/martin-shkreli-accused-of-being-surprisingly-good-at-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-12-17/martin-sh...

sehugg 9y ago

He started his career as a short seller that defrauded banks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli#MSMB_Capital_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli#MSMB_Capital_Ma...

BinaryIdiot 9y ago

> typical fraudsters take your money and run - he doesn't fit that mold. So if everything happened identically but he failed to make them money _then_ it would be bad? I don't understand.

pm90 9y ago

The law is very clear on what is a crime and what isn't. So when he misused his funds, he committed a crime. And he was prosecuted and convicted for it. Doesn't matter if in the end he cured cancer: he still committed a crime. I have a feeling that since most people have never dealt with the justice system, they fail to appreciate just how black and white it really is. While the movies/TV do portray cases where "extenuating circumstances" help the case, most cases are pretty straightforward.