Martin Shkreli Is in Big Trouble With the IRS
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Former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli reportedly owes more than $4.6 million in unpaid taxes to the IRS and is apparently trying to buy Kanye West's album to stop it from public release. The guy who raised the price of a lifesaving AIDS drug by about 5,000 percent and was arrested by FBI agents on unrelated charges of securities fraud last year is now in even deeper financial trouble, Gawker reports.
Gawker - gawker.com
The IRS lien is apparently not enough to stop Shkreli from making other offers, however, including one to Kanye West:
The former hedge fund manager incurred that debt between 2013 and 2014, a copy of the federal tax lien shows. During that time, he served as the CEO of Retrophin, a drug company that he founded in 2011. After the company's board voted to drop him in 2014, Shkreli went on to found Turing Pharmaceuticals, a pharmaceutical company that came under fire after it acquired and raised the price of Daraprim — a drug that treats a rare, infectious disease — from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
"We are giving a notice that taxes (including interest and penalties) have been assessed against the following-named taxpayer," the IRS document reads. "We have made a demand for payment of this liability, but it remains unpaid. Therefore, there is a lien in favor of the United States on all property and rights to property belonging to this taxpayer for the amount of these taxes, and additional penalties, interest, and costs that may accrue."
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Shkreli's current financial situation is unclear. After he was arrested on charges of securities fraud in December, federal officials alleged that he had orchestrated an elaborate Ponzi scheme during his time as a hedge fund manager, essentially paying off unhappy investors from former firms with money he made at new firms. The scheme came to light just months after Shkreli became the face of pharmaceutical greed for his drug pricing practices at Turing.
Now the IRS appears to be coming after Shkreli, too. How bad this tax lien could hurt him is yet to be determined. But federal prosecutors did reveal earlier this month that Shkreli's online brokerage accounts with E-Trade had shrunk from about $45 million to less than $5 million — at the time jeopardizing his ability to make bail.
