Martin Shkreli’s impromptu trial discussions with reporters at the Brooklyn federal courthouse are over as the judge overseeing the case ordered the former pharmaceutical executive to stop talking about it in and around the building. But he can go on discussing it on the internet.
Shkreli, on trial for securities fraud, spent about five minutes on June 30 in a courtroom set up for an overflow crowd, including reporters. He criticized prosecutors and the media while denying he defrauded the first witness in the case. The government argued a gag order was necessary to prevent Shkreli from causing a mistrial by exposing jurors to his opinions.
“I was shocked that there were these comments," U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto said at a hearing on Wednesday, where prosecutors sought a complete gag on Shkreli, including his comments on social media about the trial. The judge restricted him from talking “in the courthouse or on perimeter roads.”
Also at Wednesday’s hearing, prosecutors revealed for the first time that Shkreli’s lawyers offered to have him plead guilty at least three times, including a week before the June 26 start of the trial.
Shkreli’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman said he was doing his duty to see if the case could be worked out without a trial and his client didn’t initiate any of the talks and rejected the idea of admitting guilt.
“I would never plead guilty to something I did not do,” Brafman quoted Shkreli as saying. “We’re going to trial.”
Shkreli, 34, is fighting charges of operating two hedge funds like a Ponzi scheme.
Prosecutors claim he took clients’ money without permission and used it to start Retrophin Inc. Shkreli is also accused of looting $11 million of the drug company’s assets to pay off investors who’d lost money in the funds.
He faces as long as 20 years in prison if convicted of the most serious charges.
Jurors on Wednesday heard from an investor whom Shkreli once credited with helping create Retrophin.