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Martin Shkreli think he’s the victim of a vast government conspiracy

Martin Shkreli think he’s the victim of a vast government conspiracy

Last Thursday, 32-year-old price gouger Martin Shkreli was arrested by the FBI and charged with securities fraud and conspiracy for some shady business he conducted while working for the biopharmaceutical company Retrophin.

A day later, he was ousted from his job at CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, a company he started himself.

Now he claims he’s the victim of a vast government conspiracy to punish him for raising drug prices.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Shkreli insisted that the FBI was going after him because back in August he hiked up the price of Daraprim, a drug used by some HIV patients, by more than 5,000 percent overnight, going from $13.50 to $750 per tablet.

“‘Trying to find anything we could to stop him,’ was the attitude of the government,” Shkreli snarled. “Beating the person up and then trying to find the merits to make up for it — I would have hoped the government wouldn’t take that kind of approach.”

He also claimed that he was being punished for his snarky Twitter account and “because of a social experiment and teasing people over the Internet.”

Shkreli went on to call the whole situation “a real injustice.”

“Quite frankly, it was not something I expected,” he said of his arrest, “and definitely not something I deserve given the facts.”

He maintains that he will be found not guilty of both the securities fraud and the conspiracy charges, for which he could potentially serve 20 years, if convicted.

On Saturday he tweeted:

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