Big Pharma's Shkreli sentenced to seven years in prison

The brash 34-year-old gained notoriety for jacking up the price of a life-saving anti-infection drug. (Photo: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg)

Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical industry’s enfant terrible, was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison, putting an end to a saga that captivated and sometimes enraged Washington, Wall Street and the tabloids.

The brash 34-year-old — who gained notoriety for jacking up the price of a life-saving anti-infection drug — was convicted in August of lying to investors in his hedge funds and manipulating shares in Retrophin Inc., a biotech company he founded. Prosecutors sought a sentence of at least 15 years for the securities fraud. Shkreli, who once proclaimed “you can’t quell the Shkrel,” asked for as little as a year. “This case is not about Mr. Shkreli’s self-cultivated public persona,” U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in Brooklyn, New York, said Friday before handing down the sentence. His actions were “extremely serious,” she said, recounting how he boasted once of threatening an investor and his family.