It’s a far cry from the heady days of jacking up prices on life-saving drugs and spending ridiculous money to be the sole owner of a Wu Tang album.
“Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, who is best known for jacking up the price of an antiparasitic pill from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill, now lives in his sister’s apartment in Queens and makes $2,500 per month at a law firm, Bloomberg reported.
Shkreli, who was released from prison in May 2022 after serving seven years for securities fraud, has gone from enfant terrible while heading up Turing Pharmaceuticals to 40-year-old ex-con, trying to make ends meet, the outlet reported, citing a probation report filed in Brooklyn.
A report by his probation officer said he hadn’t fulfilled his mandatory 20 hours of community service, stating that he was struggling with an unspecified mental health issue.
Apparently gone are the multimillionaire days of owning a Picasso painting, a machine used to decode Nazi communications during World War II, a letter by Charles Darwin and the only copy of Wu Tang’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.”
In addition to prison time, he was banned from the pharmaceutical industry and ordered to pay a fine of nearly $65 million. Many of his possessions were sold to pay fines and penalties, the outlet said.
The $2,500 per month he makes as a consultant at the Law Office of Christopher K. Johnston isn’t enough to cover a month’s rent of an average 700-square-foot apartment in Queens ($2,800 per month), according to Rentcafe.
— Ted Glanzer