Martin Shkreli is Released from Federal Prison into a Halfway House in NY

Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli, who received his famous moniker for defending the price increase of a life saving drug, has been released from federal prison this week.

Shkreli was released from a federal prison in Pennsylvania and into a Bureau of Prisons halfway house in New York to complete the rest of his criminal sentence for securities fraud.

Shkreli had smugly defended increasing the price of life-saving drug Daraprim by more than 4,000% overnight in 2015.

Shkreli’s release was noted in a Twitter post by a friend, who apparently picked him up from prison.

“Getting out of real prison is easier than getting out of Twitter prison,” Shkreli, 39, wrote on his Facebook page Wednesday. The former pharma executive had been banned from Twitter, which dates to his harassment of a female journalist in 2017.

A friend of his tweeted a photo of them together smiling in a car after his release, with the caption: “Picked up this guy hitchhiking. Says he’s famous.”

The friend, Edmund Sullivan, was wearing a t-shirt featuring a photo of Shkreli smirking during testimony before Congress, with the words, “Free Shkreli” underneath it.

Sullivan is a former board member of a drug company Shkreli founded, Retrophin, which now is known as Travere Therapeutics.

Shkreli had been ordered to return $64M for jacking up the drug’s price. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison in March 2018. His release slightly more than four years after that sentencing reflects the credit he received for good behavior in prison, and for completing education and rehabilitation programs while locked up.

Shkreli’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman, in a statement Wednesday, said, “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 his prison sentence to be shortened.”

“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,” Brafman said.

A Bureau of Prisons spokesman said Shkreli was transferred to community confinement overseen by the agency’s Residential Reentry Management Office.

“Community confinement means the inmate is in either home confinement or a Residential Reentry Center (RRC, or halfway house),” the spokesman said in a statement. “Mr. Shkreli’s projected release date from the custody of the BOP is September 14, 2022. For safety and security reasons, we do not discuss any individual inmate’s conditions of confinement to include transfers or release plans.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.