“Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli has launched a newsletter on Substack in the wake of his release from federal prison.
The 39-year-old, who was convicted in 2017, was released from a Pennsylvania prison and into a Bureau of Prisons halfway house in New York in May. He launched his free-for-now blog this week and claims it will cover “investing, science and technology.”
Shkreli says that he wrote the first post the week before his 18 May release from prison, though it only published on Thursday. In it, he asks if Twitter will end his ban, which has been in place since 2017.
The first post also includes a joke about Shkreli’s notorious drug price-hiking past.
“This will not be a free Substack. Expect a 5000% price increase soon. Just don’t mix up relative and absolute changes. That’s been a matter of confusion in the past,” he wrote.
Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison back in March 2018 and was released after four years after receiving credit for good behaviour. The former pharmaceutical executive also spent six months in prison before his sentencing.
A federal judge revoked his bail two months after his conviction when he offered his Facebook followers $5,000 for a sample of Hillary Clinton’s hair.
Shkreli notably received his “Pharma bro” nickname while CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals after it raised the price of the life-saving drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill overnight in 2015.
The drug treats a rare parasitic disease that strikes pregnant women, cancer patients, and AIDS patients.
