'Pharma bro' Martin Shkreli put in solitary after allegedly running company from prison

Former pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli has been placed in solitary confinement after reportedly running his company from prison.

Who is Martin Shkreli?

Shkreli is the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. He faced widespread criticism after he bought a lifesaving AIDS drug in 2015 and hiked the price dramatically from $13.50 to $750 per capsule. In an email obtained by congressional investigators in 2016, Shkreli bragged that at the new price point "almost all of it is profit."

In late 2017, he was convicted on two counts of securities fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud related two hedge funds he owned. Prosecutors said he had defrauded "multiple investors" to the tune of millions of dollars. In March, he was sentenced to seven years. He also had to forfeit almost $7.4 million to the federal government.

He is currently being held at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, New Jersey.

His company has since changed its name from Turing Pharmaceuticals to Phoenixus AG.

What's the story now?

Forbes reports that Shkreli was thrown in solitary confinement last month. Another inmate told Forbes that cellphones at the prison can be obtained for money.

According to Forbes, Shkreli allegedly used one of these illegally obtained phones to run Phoenixus AG from prison. This included firing Phoenixus's then-current chief executive. He also used the phone to tweet under a fake account. Shkreli had been suspended from Twitter since January 2017 after harassing freelance journalist Lauren Duca after she turned down his request for her to be his date at Trump's inauguration.

The Bureau of Prisons refused to provide a comment to Forbes about "an individual inmate's conditions of confinement." It did, however, volunteer that these allegations were "under investigation."