NEW YORK -- Martin Shkreli was "his own worst enemy," a juror at his fraud trial said Monday.
On Aug. 4, after a five-week trial and five days of deliberations, the jury found Shkreli guilty on three of eight counts. He was convicted of securities fraud -- for lying to hedge fund investors -- and of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, with a stock scheme surrounding Retrophin, a pharmaceutical company he founded. He faces as much as 20 years in prison; a sentencing date has not been set.
"All he had to do was to tell everyone, 'I'm sorry, I lost the money, all I can say is I'm sorry,' and that would be it," said the juror, Lois Pounds. "But there's a side of him -- I think it's partly ego -- that he wanted to be thought of as this great financial individual."
Jurors believed that Shkreli committed fraud in lying to investors, Pounds said, but as they parsed through the required elements for all eight counts he was charged with, they did not find "that he had the intent and purpose to specifically rob and cause a person to lose money and property" in all of the counts.
Pounds, a retired procurement specialist for the utility Consolidated Edison, said Monday that "most of us agreed that there was a little something off with him."
Business on 08/22/2017