Martin ‘Pharma Bro’ Shkreli Released From Prison Early, Staying In A Halfway House

Martin Shkreli, former CEO and hedge fund manager, known as “Pharma Bro”, is out of prison three years before he was expected to be released.

According to NBC News, Shkreli served a little over four years, of his seven-year sentence, for defrauding investors in two hedge funds and a former drug company.

"I am pleased to report that Martin Shkreli has been released from Allenwood prison and transferred to a BOP halfway house after completing all programs that allowed for his prison sentence to be shortened,” Benjamin Brafman, Shkreli’s attorney, said in a statement given to ABC News. “While in the halfway house I have encouraged Mr. Shkreli to make no further statement, nor will he or I have any additional comments at this time.”

Shkreli did, however, share a selfie in a Facebook post, this week, with the caption, “Getting out of real prison is easier than getting out of Twitter prison,” referring to being banned from the platform in 2017 for “targeted harassment” of a journalist.

According to the New York Post, Shkreli has joined the dating app Bumble in search of love.

Shkreli first made headlines in 2015, when he was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, and raised the price of a popular anti-malaria medication, Daraprim, often prescribed to HIV patients, by 4000%. The life-saving drug increased from $13.50 to $750 a pill, according to reporting by CNBC.

In 2017, Shkreli was found guilty of two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. He was sentenced in 2018.

Earlier this year, a U.S. District Judge ordered Shkreli to pay back $64.6 million in profits from the Daraprim price hike. Shkreli is also barred from the pharmaceutical industry for the rest of his life, according to reporting by NPR.

Shkreli will be released from the halfway house in September, according to NBC News.