‘Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli made gay sex claims to lure in investor, court told
‘Pharmo bro’ Martin Shkreli made a string of gay sex claims in a bid to curry favour with an out investor, a court has heard.
Shkreli made claims of wanting to hook up with men in the workplace and bedding male waiters, a former investor in his business says.
City bigwig Steven Richardson, who is gay, says Shkreli made comments “of a gay nature” to get closer to him.
The former American Express human resources vice president, who invested $400,000 into Shkreli’s MSMB Capitol hedge fund in 2009 and 2010, told jurors Shkreli “was starting to say certain things of a gay nature that started to worry me a bit”.
Richardson, who has a long-term partner, told Brooklyn federal court jurors: “I thought maybe he was saying things to me because he thought I would want to hear them.
“He was saying things to me, like, ‘Maybe I’ll have sex with a guy in the office,’ or we’d be at a restaurant and there’d be a waiter and he’d say, ‘Maybe I should hook up with him.’”
The comments came to a head when Richardson challenged the self-styled ‘pharmo bro’ on his comments directly.
He led Shkreli, 34, into his bedroom after an evening drinking, sat him on the bed, and challenged him on whether he felt sexual attraction.
Following cocktails in his Chelsea apartment in March 2010, he told jurors: “I walked him into the bedroom and I sat him onto the bed with me.
“Here you are in a gay man’s bedroom,” he confronted Shkreli.
“Do you have any physical feelings for me?
“He took a second and said, ‘No, I like you a lot but I don’t,’” Richardson said.
“Good, that’s what I expected to hear and wanted to hear.”
Prosecutors claim Shkreli moved money from his hedge fund, MSMB Capitol, into his start-up pharma company Retrophin.
In opening remarks, defence lawyer Ben Brafman described Retrophin board members — which Richardson would later become — as buttoned-up high-rollers who refused to accept his client as an “odd-duck” and questioned his sexuality.
