Martin Shkreli, a former pharmaceutical executive notorious for sharply increasing drug prices was sentenced on Friday to seven years in prison after being convicted of fraud last year, the New York Times reported. Prosecutors had sought a sentence of at least 15 years; the defense had pushed for 12 to 18 months. Shkreli is best known for raising the price of a drug, Daraprim, by 5,000 percent in a move that was widely condemned by the public and politicians. His fraud convictions were unrelated to that episode, stemming instead from his involvement with Retrophin, a pharmaceutical company he founded in 2011, and two hedge funds he ran. In August, a jury convicted Shkreli on three of eight counts, concluding that he had lied to investors about, among other things, how the hedge funds were managed, what they invested in and how much money they had. The jury found that he had also secretly controlled a huge number of Retrophin shares.
