He stole money from one group of investors, gambled with that money in a new company (while lying about it on all of the relevant financial statements) and eventually made the original investors whole --- if you ignore the profits that he made by using their money illegally. Why on Earth do people defend that scumbag? Because he had some Livestreams?
If you rob a bank, spend all that money on lottery tickets, then leave a sack of money for the exact amount you stole in the lobby after getting lucky, do you think everything should be copacetic?
1. You still robbed the bank!
2. Gambling with someone else's money isn't virtuous.
Do you think the fedex founder should be in jail when he gambled company money at a casino and used the profits to save the company. He committed financial fraud, I am sure his credit lines don’t allow for the money to be gambled at a casino.
I am willing to bet most startups’ financial decks have material mistatements.
Are you really this angry at him over illegal accounting/investing? Or are you using that as an excuse because you're actually angry at him over what he did with daraprim? I think many people defend him because they suspect people claiming to be mad about the former are actually mad about the later.
Edit:
> "So people are defending him on #1 because they think other people are too mad about #2? "
Yes that's my belief.
Imagine Mel Gibson was caught bringing weed into an authoritarian SEA country, and was sentenced to caning. Now imagine there were people celebrating that sentencing, because Mel Gibson is a racist. In this hypothetical, is he a drug smuggling racist? Yes. I wager you'd see people defend him though, and accuse people celebrating his caning as being biased by his racism.
I just can't imagine what he's done that's worth defending.. I don't care at all about him, the Daraprim thing was ugly and a symptom of what's wrong with the US pharma / PBM / insurance racket but it's not like that was virtuous either just because it was legal.
As far as I can tell he's done two things;
1. Profited handsomely off of white collar crime while defrauding his original investors.
2. The whole Daraprim thing.
So people are defending him on #1 because they think other people are too mad about #2?
What he’s done that’s worth defending? His actions pointed out a glaring flaw in the US healthcare system. I wouldn’t call him a whistleblower — more of an opportunist — but the effect of his actions was to blow the whistle on a broken system and get guys like me woke to the fact that the guys who make epi-pen and insulin did far worse than him, yet still walk free and unpunished.
The effect of Shkreli’s actions, to me personally, are functionally the same as hackers who hack into FB... only to have FB pay them for exposing the holes in their security system. Shkreli exposed a hole in the healthcare system. That he did so opportunistically is legitimately kinda gross, but the net benefit of his actions is that guys like me are now way more aware of the broken system that allowed him to operate in the first place. THAT’S what he’s done that’s worth defending.
If you rob a bank, spend all that money on lottery tickets, then leave a sack of money for the exact amount you stole in the lobby after getting lucky, do you think everything should be copacetic?
1. You still robbed the bank!
2. Gambling with someone else's money isn't virtuous.