Earlier this week, “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli offered $5,000 to anyone who brought him a hair from one-time Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. Now federal prosecutors want to lock him up.
According to a Thursday filing with the Eastern District of New York, the 34-year-old former hedge funder wrote on Facebook Monday: “The Clinton Foundation is willing to KILL to protect its secrets. So on HRC’s book tour, try to grab a hair from her… Will pay $5,000 per hair obtained.”
The pharmaceutical executive—made famous for hiking the price of a drug used by HIV/AIDS patients by over 5,000% in 2015—later said the post was “satire” and eventually deleted it, the prosecutors said.
The post nonetheless led the U.S. Secret Service to launch an investigation and expend “significant additional resources to ensure Secretary Clinton’s protection,” the filing stated. Clinton is expected to begin her book tour Sept. 12.
To prosecutors, the post was part of an “escalating pattern of threats and harassment” that signaled Shkreli was indeed a “danger to his community.” They asked that Shkreli’s $5 million bail be revoked.
They noted that Shkreli previously was banned from Twitter for allegedly harassing the Teen Vogue columnist Lauren Duca in January.
The letter comes ahead of the Sept. 14 hearing on Shkreli’s bail.
Shkreli has not shied away from the limelight since he was found guilty of defrauding a group of hedge fund investors in August. He has offered to sell his one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album on eBay and, in another Facebook post, the former hedge funder linked to a friend’s eBay auction of a fidget spinner that once belonged to Shkreli. The price of that spinner has steadily risen to over $14,000.
