Author: Joey deVilla

My new rule about news stories is to ask the question: “What’s the wacky Taiwanese animator take on this? Then I go look, and I’m never disappointed.

The rule held for the story of douchey price-gouging biotech CEO Martin Shkreli. The subtitles are in pretty good colloquial North American English, which makes me wonder what Mandarin words are getting translated into “douchebag” and “weasel”.

The animators did a good job of riffing of the photos of Shkreli that have appeared online, whether he’s fancying himself a decent rapper, or tooling around on his toolbag scooter:

And, to satisfy many visceral urges, they’ve take care to include a lot of scenes in which Shkreli gets the crap kicked out of him.

Here’s the video:

This is what happens when you have Google image search but know very little history. (And here’s the relevant George Santayana quote, in case you didn’t get the reference in this post’s title.)

Note: “Happy Yom Kippur” is the wrong greeting — try saying “Have an easy fast” instead.

While taking a break from news related to the douchey price-gouging biotech CEO, I pointed my browser at the too-hip-for-its-own-good music site Pitchfork to see what was new there. That’s when I learned that there’s no escaping Martin Shkreli.

Back in 2014, the douchey CEO — whom I presume took some measures to mask his douchiness — bought a guitar off Geoff Rickly, frontman for the band Thursday. Somehow, during the transaction, Shkreli ended up financing Rickly’s indie label, Brooklyn-based Collect Records. This investment was supposedly a “thank you” by Shkreli to Thursday for their music, which had helped him when he was younger.

To a musician, this is a dream: to be approached by a rich benefactor who appreciates your work and be given money — which musicians are almost always short of — to keep doing what they’re doing. To this day, I hear musicians tell each other the story of how the prog-rock band Supertramp was bankrolled by a millionaire because he thought their keyboardist (Rick Davies) was incredibly talented (he is).

Unsurprisingly, the bands aren’t all too pleased that their label is being bankrolled by that guy:

Nicky Palermo, frontman for the band Nothing (who are on Collect Records), posted this to the band’s Facebook page last night:

Last night I read an article about this guy who was hiking up prices on some pharmaceutics that were leaving people on their death beds empty handed due to the cost. Not soon after that found out that this guy is backing the label I’m about to release a record on.

I scoured the internet all night and early morning to try and see both sides before I made an opinion on the matter as I know how one sided people can be when there is a public lynching. But by 6 am today I literally just felt disgusted by everything and this seems to be in fact, the work of a soulless man.

I was approached by Geoff Rickley about a year ago now, about how he was starting a label. He said he really believed in Nothing and the music we were creating. We were told of a backer who was an old Thursday fan that wanted to give back to the music and arts, but literally didn’t even know his name until last night. After Geoff told me his plans I really believed in him. He’s a great guy and he like me had, no idea what kind of monster was funding the label and soon to be album. And like he has helped me with my problems the past few months, I plan on helping him in anyway I can as well through this all.

I’m not sure what the next step is here for us as were contractually attached to this person, but I had to share my revulsion with you all as the future is not quite foreseeable.

Palermo told the Washington Post that he grew up in a poor single-parent family and often couldn’t afford health care:

“I’ve been a person who hasn’t had health insurance for pretty much my whole life since I was a kid. I’ve had broken bones. I’ve had to Super Glue my forehead shut when I hit myself with a guitar. I owe money to hospitals for things.”

And as you might expect, many of the other musicians on the label are in the same boat, and don’t like the idea of being funded by a douchey guy who price-gouges medicine.

And there you have it: not even indie/post-punk/hardcore rock is safe from the douchey price-gouging biotech CEO.

Click the image to see THE ELDRITCH HORROR at full size.

Are the Elder Gods “Old Stock” enough for ya?! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu Harper wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Thanks to Heather Libby and Liz Phillips for the find!

Martin Shkreli, the douchey price-gouging biotech CEO who bought a drug company and jacked its product’s price from $13.50 to $750 for each pill, may have locked down his Twitter account to keep the convo between him and what are presumably friendly fellow douchebags, but his LinkedIn profile is open to the public…and it’s quite unsurprising.

I like to think that I’m reasonably well-connected, but I’m still a little surprised that I had a 3rd-degree connection with him on LinkedIn:

Here’s his resume, which shows a rise from grunt to C-suite in 6 years. Looking at it, I’m reminded of the Dorothy Parker quote: “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”

The most telling part of his LinkedIn profile is the Skills section. Although Shkreli has described himself as a “self-trained biologist”, it appears to be an attempt to portray himself as a creator of wealth rather than a mere manipulator of it, if you consider the skills for which is endorse by himself and his peers:

Click the image to see it at full size.

I hereby declare this the meme of the day!

Yesterday, I told you about Martin Shkreli, the douchey former hedge-funder turned price-gouging pharmaceutical CEO.

His drug company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, recently bought the rights to Daraprim, a drug that’s been around for over 60 years and is the standard treatment for toxoplasmosis, which affects up to half the world’s population, especially people with HIV or who are otherwise immunocompromised. His company has since changed the price of Daraprim pills, which are said to cost $1 each to manufacture, from $13.50 each to $750, making him Big Pharma’s biggest a-hole, a field in which the competition is pretty serious.

It turns out that the Daraprim fiasco is just another data point in a long pattern of pharma profiteering über alles:

• He’s not new to unseemly financial activity. At his first job, he interned for stock market huckster Jim “Mad Money” Cramer, where he underwent his first SEC investigation after a rather successful short of a biotech stock at the tender age of 19.
• Nor is he new to drug and biotech profiteering. He has time and again been called out by Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) for illegally manipulating biotech and pharma stock prices and inserting himself into the Food and Drug Administration’s drug approval process for financial gain.
• This isn’t his first price gouging. In 2014, the biotech company he founded, Retrophin, acquired the rights to Thiola, which is used to treat an incurable kidney disease and raise its price by over 20 times.
• Last year, Retrophin — and remember, he’s a founder — fired him. he was fired from Retrophin, the biotech company he founded, for all manner of “stock irregularities” including disguising legal settlements with former investors as “consulting agreements”, and using company cash to resolve legal claims against himself and a hedge fund he ran. They also sued him. In February of this year, Retrophin filed a preliminary report of his wrongdoings with the SEC.

And he’s not afraid to make it personal, either.

Take a look at this police report, taken by the police in Summit, New Jersey back in December of 2013:

It was filed by one Timothy Pierotti, a former colleague of Shkleri’s at Retrophin turned business rival. The report is about a year-long campaign of harrassment by Shkleri, which included:

• Stalking Pierotti and his family,
• sending nasty texts, emails, and social media messages to Pierotti, his wife, and even his teenaged children, and
• Gaining access to Pierotti’s Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts and making damaging posts.

Shkreli sued Pierotti, whose lawyers filed documents saying that Shkreli sent threatening messages to Pierotti’s wife, such as letters saying “I hope to see you and your four children homeless and will do whatever I can to assure this”…

Click the image to read the full document.

…and creepy, cryptic text messages like this one:

Click the image to more Shkreli creepiness.

Epilogue (for now)

At the time of this writing, Shkreli has announced that they’ll lower the price of Daraprim:

You may also want to check out this article by Kurt Eichenwald (he wrote Microsoft’s Lost Decade for Vanity Fair back in 2012): Man Who Hiked AIDS Drug 5,000 Percent Faces Investigation for His Old Job.

Also worth checking out is TheStreet.com’s Worst CEOs in Biotech for 2014, and guess who’s on the list: