Daraprim is a little known drug used to treat severe parasitic infections, which makes it an extremely crucial resource to extremely vulnerable patients with compromised immune systems, due to HIV or cancer. The move by Shkreli and his utter lack of remorse for it, naturally came under fire from presidential candidates to social media users.

The 32-year-old was marched from his Manhattan flat by federal agents, while he was still in a grey hoodie and jeans. He later appeared in court, where he pleaded not guilty, and the judge released him on a $5 million bond.

He has been accused of cheating investors by using cash and stock transactions from his biotech firm, as a cover to hide money lost in bad bets at the hedge funds he managed, as reported by Fortune .

U.S. Attorney Robert L. Capers stated that, “Shkreli was engaged in multiple schemes to ensnare investors through a web of lies and deceit,” and “his plots were matched only by efforts to conceal the fraud, which led him to operate his companies as a Ponzi scheme.”

When he made headlines with the outrageous price rise he ordered through his company Turing Pharmaceuticals, he was criticised by Hillary Clinton, and even went on to call a journalist a “moron” on Twitter. Even when he was asked if he would have done things differently, he simply said, “I probably would have raised the price higher”.

Bloomberg reported that the poster-boy of the new hip, outspoken entrepreneur image begin his journey with hedge fund MSMB capital in 2009, where he raised millions from investors only to make a risky bet about prices of a small pharma company falling.

The bet went wrong and he lost $7 million of investors in his hedge fund, but instead of revealing the loss, Shkreli started another hedge fund to raise more money to bail out his previous investors through MSMB Healthcare.

He lied to potential investors of MSMB Healthcare about his disastrous dealings in the past, and claimed to have a war chest of $55 million as opposed to the real figure of $6 million. While he told investors that their money had increased, he was using all their money to repay other clients, whose money had been lost in bad bets.

He also started a new firm called Retrophin, and funneled millions in stocks and cash to repay investors asking for their money, and concealed details of transactions from Retrophin’s board, which later kicked him out, and cooperated by investigations against Shkreli.

Although sharp criticism made Shkreli bring down prices on Daraprim for hospitals, he was his vociferous self, as he streamed his personal life on YouTube, and boasted about buying the one of a kind Wu-Tang Clan album for $2 million, only to be distanced by the hip hop group.

But the confident and vocal entrepreneur went silent as the only thing he said in court was a meek “yes your honour”, and despite being in media spotlight he refused to comment. Even Turing pharma and his lawyers did not respond to any request for comments by media outlets.

If proven guilty, Martin Shkreli could end up with 20 years in jail on criminal charges, and the civil charges leveled against him can bar him from serving on a company board for life.

(All images sourced from: Reuters)