Martin Shkreli finally received a punishment that many Americans feel he deserves on Wednesday when the Brooklyn judge who presided over his trial revoked his bail and ordered him held at a notorious federal jail in Brooklyn until his sentening in January.
The former Turing Pharmaceutical CEO is facing up to 20 years in prison, though the judge has "wide lattitude" to decide the punishment.
During the week before his bail hearing, Shkreli apparently put aside his disgust for reporters long enough to share a few thoughts with a reporter from Gizmodo. Now, that reporter has decided to publish the contents to what amounts to an interview via email.
Somehow, he managed to wrestle a handful of half-serious answers from “the most hated man in the world.”
ON PRISON:
While Shkreli insisted that the sentencing guidelines only call for 0-6 months, he says he’s consulted with people about how to act on the inside. He added that prison probably wouldn’t be so bad; since Trump is president, “every day is nirvana.”
If he does receive a longer sentence, Shkreli said “it will be a good opportunity to read and reflect. He also plans to “make paper from the inside,” though he didn’t specify how.
READING:
The reporter asked Shkreli what his top-five books to read in prison would be. This was Shkreli’s response:
“I would mostly read business reports from my companies and technical materials (medicine, computer science).
I read a lot so I’m not sure ‘top 5' works. I don’t read much fiction but I would probably bone up on philosophy.”
THE WU TANG CLAN ALBUM:
Shkreli refused to discuss the album. However, in a surprising development, “Once Upon A Time In Shaolin’s” status as an “official” Wu-Tang Clan album has been called into question by associates of the group, Bloomberg reports.
Instead, the project was initially undertaken by an outside producer who eventually persuaded the group’ leader, the RZA, to endorse the project.
ON BLOOMBERG:
When a Bloomberg reporter asked Shkreli to comment on the record’s provenance, Shkreli instead shared his thoughts about Bloomberg’s business prospects.
“Bloomberg is an overpriced, legacy software system that subsidizes a money-losing media company,” Shkreli wrote. “This state of affairs will soon change.”
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In other Shkreli-related news, NBC reports that Shkreli will be doing time in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Correctional Center – the same federal facility that currently houses Mexican drug baron Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, and is also home to mobsters, terrorists and other high-level inmates.
One federal judge has likened it to "a Third World country."
In fact, one of Benjamin Brafman's former clients, Jacob Alexander, a tech CEO charged with a stock fraud scheme, complained about the conditions at the Brooklyn facility last year. Brafman shared those concerns in a letter to the court ahead of Shkreli’s bail hearing.
"Mr. Alexander and other male prisoners at the MDC are deprived of fresh air or sunlight, any reasonable opportunity to exercise (Mr. Alexander spends large parts of his day walking in circles in his unit, when he is permitted to do so), and adequate health care (Mr. Alexander has been unable to get authorization to receive the hearing aids or insoles that he previously wore).”
Brafman cited a June 2016 report by the National Association of Women Judges describing conditions in the female wing as "unconscionable."
"The absence of fresh, clean air, the complete absence of sunlight, and the absence of ANY outdoor time and activities are immediate issues which BOP has failed to address in any meaningful fashion," the report said.
That led a Brooklyn judge to comment: "Some of these conditions wouldn’t surprise me if we were dealing with a prison in Turkey or a Third World country."
Not exactly the cushy “Club Fed” Shkreli had hoped for.
via http://ift.tt/2f9EGKb Tyler Durden