Shkreli then lied, and lied, and lied some more to hide his ongoing losses of investors' money from bad trades, including a failed short trade that left one of his funds $7 million in the red, and then continued lying as he used money and stock looted from his drug company Retrophin to repay them, Srinivasan said. 
 
 "All told the defendant stole more than $10 million from Retrophin and its shareholders," Srinivasan said of Shkreli, who is charged with eight criminal counts of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud, as well as securities fraud. 
 
 But Brafman portrayed Shkreli as a self-educated scientific boy wonder who slept nights in a sleeping bag in his office as he worked to develop a cure for a deadly disease afflicting children, while at the same time making millions of dollars for his investors. 
 
 Brafman said that contrary to the government's suggestions, the investors in the MSMB funds not only got their original investment amount back, but often much more. 
 
 The attorney also depicted Shkreli as an "odd duck" prone to wearing furry bunny slippers and a stethoscope around the corporate offices while serving as CEO of Retrophin. 
 
 Brafman said Shkreli was bullied and called names behind his back by co-workers as well as Retrophin board members who eventually ousted him because he didn't look or act like a conventional CEO. 
 
 Shkreli's colleagues made fun of him among themselves, calling him "Rain Man" because they believed he was autistic, and challenging his sexuality by suggesting he was gay or bisexual, Brafman said. 
 
 "As Lady Gaga said, he was born this way," Brafman said, referring to Shkreli's often awkward nature. "You wanna call him names? Call him names. Just don't call him guilty. 'Cause he's not guilty." 
 
 Shkreli, sitting at the defense table, sometimes nodded in agreement with Brafman's broad defense of him and with the lawyer's attack on expected witnesses against him. 
 
 The lawyer said that all of the people who placed their money with Shkreli's funds were sophisticated investors, or had top-notch financial advisors, and were "high rollers" who wanted to exploit Shkreli's genius to make big returns. 
 
 Brafman also said that the many consulting agreements and settlement deals that Shkreli cut, which the government claims were used to cover up his looting of Retrophin, were signed off by the corporation's board and lawyers. 
 
 Brafman suggested that Retrophin board members and its current CEO would lie when they took the witness stand against Shkreli, and told jurors that they would be able to discern those lies from how the witnesses answered questions and were contradicted by documents, emails and other evidence. 
 
 The question at the end of the trial, Brafman told jurors, will be "not whether Martin Shkreli is nuts, but whether the case is nuts." 

 After Mr. Shkreli lost millions of dollars in a trade, draining the remaining money from MSMB Capital, a few days later he founded MSMB Healthcare, in early 2011, the prosecutor said. About the same time, he formed the pharmaceutical company Retrophin, and had MSMB Healthcare invest in Retrophin. “The defendant was on both sides of the deal,” Mr. Srinivasan said. 
 
 When his debt for the trading loss came due, “he stole money from MSMB Healthcare” to pay the debt, which the health care fund did not owe, Mr. Srinivasan said. Mr. Shkreli then told investors that he was shutting down the two funds, and told them they could have stock in Retrophin or cash for their shares. 
 
 Those who wanted cash could not get it and threatened to sue, he said, and that is when Mr. Shkreli arranged for Retrophin to “pay off” the MSMB investors. 
 
 “Retrophin owed these investors nothing — the defendant owed these debts,” Mr. Srinivasan said. When accountants told him to stop, Mr. Shkreli arranged to hire the investors as consultants, a sham, the prosecutor said. 
 
 Investors may have made their money back, Mr. Srinivasan said, but Mr. Shkreli still committed fraud. 
 
 In his opening, Mr. Brafman flipped the setup that Mr. Srinivasan had constructed in trying to portray the investors and Retrophin board as victims and Mr. Shkreli as a villain. 
 
 Actually, Mr. Brafman said, Mr. Shkreli was pushed out of Retrophin because its board thought he did “not conform to their idea of what a public company C.E.O. should look like or walk like or talk like,” he said. 

 At start of securities fraud trial, US prosecutor accuses ex-pharmaceutical CEO of building a bogus hedge fund empire by telling ‘lies on top of lies on top of lies’ 
 
 Martin Shkreli is either a con man who scammed hedge fund investors out of millions or a nerdy genius who made them even richer. 
 
 
 
 The conflicting portraits were offered Wednesday in opening statements at Shkreli’s securities fraud trial, a case colored by the ex-pharmaceutical CEO’s antics on social media which, despite the urging of his lawyers to lay low, have never subsided. 
 
 Potential Martin Shkreli jurors: we can't be impartial over 'most hated man' in US Read more 
 
 “Is he strange? Yes,” the defense attorney Benjamin Brafman told the jurors in federal court in Brooklyn. “Will you find him weird? Yes. But Martin Shkreli, despite all his flaws and dysfunctional personality, is brilliant beyond words.” 
 
 In his opening, the assistant US attorney Karthik Srinivasan accused Shkreli of building a bogus hedge fund empire by telling “lies on top of lies on top of lies”. Though he portrayed himself as a Wall Street wizard, “in reality, he was just a con man”, the prosecutor said. 
 
 Shkreli, sometimes dubbed Pharma Bro, often slumped in his chair and looked bored during jury selection but listened intently and took notes during the government’s opening. As his lawyer spoke, he beamed at times. 
 
 Shkreli, 34, became a pariah in 2015 after a drug company he founded, Turing Pharmaceuticals, spent $55m for the US rights to sell a life-saving medicine called Daraprim and promptly raised the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill. 
 
 The spotlight intensified later that year with his arrest on charges – unrelated to Daraprim – focusing on a pair of failed hedge funds he founded. After he lost investors’ money through bad trades, he secretly looted Retrophin, another pharmaceutical company where he was CEO, for $10m to pay back his disgruntled clients, Srinivasan said. 
 
 “Rather than owning up to his lies and admitting his investments were a failure, the defendant doubled down by engaging in an even bigger fraud,” he said. 
 
 The alleged victims in the case were high-rolling investors who were drawn to Shkreli’s quirky personality and ended up getting their money back – and more – because Retrophin eventually became a successful startup worth $1bn, Brafman said. 
 
 Board members of his companies who made fun of Shkreli behind his back – questioning his sexuality, wondering if he was autistic and calling him Rain Man after the movie character – misunderstood his talents, said the defense lawyer, who referred to his client as a “nerd”, “odd duck” and a “mad scientist”. 
 
 He added: “As Lady Gaga said, ‘He was Born This Way.” 
 
 Jury selection, which started Monday, dragged out until late Wednesday afternoon as the judge sought to find jurors who could ignore the negative press over the price-gouging scandal. Also hard to ignore was Skhreli’s footprint on social media, where he boasted about buying a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album for $2m and got kicked off Twitter for trolling a female freelance journalist in creepy ways. 
 
 Questioned by the judge during sidebars, prospective jurors described Shkreli as “the face of corporate greed” and “a snake”. 
 
 “In this particular case,” another dismissed juror said Wednesday, “the only thing I’d be impartial about is what prison he goes to.” 
 
 Shkreli is free on $5m bond. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
– Is Martin Shkreli "strange" and "weird," with a "dysfunctional personality"? Yes on all counts, per Benjamin Brafman, the ex-pharma CEO's lawyer, who offered what the New York Times calls a "captivating" opening statement at Shkreli's securities fraud trial Wednesday in New York City. Brafman also threw in the terms "nerd" and "mad scientist," per the Guardian, but noted his client was "brilliant beyond words" and actually made investors in his two hedge funds and his pharmaceutical firm, Retrophin, a lot of money. "As Lady Gaga said, 'He was born this way,'" Brafman added, with Shkreli paying rapt attention from his seat as if he were "watching a terrific movie," per the Times. Brafman said it was the investors and Retrophin board who bullied and questioned the sexuality of Shkreli, who later gained notoriety for jacking up the price of a life-saving medication via his Turing Pharmaceuticals startup. The prosecution painted quite a different picture, with Assistant US Attorney Karthik Srinivasan saying Shkreli's hedge funds were constructed with "lies on top of lies on top of lies" and ended up losing his investors money—which Shkreli then tried to cover up by sneaking money out of Retrophin to pay them back. "In reality, he was just a con man," Srinivasan said. The Washington Post notes that during Srinivasan's diatribe against Shkreli, Shkreli simply jotted down some words and grinned. Some potential jurors agreed with Srinivasan: More than 250 candidates were dismissed over three days, many due to their "Pharma Bro" views. Still, Brafman didn't pass up a chance to cite Lady Gaga yet again. "The government's going to stand up and give you 100 million reasons to convict," Brafman said, per CNBC. "I'm going [to] give you one good reason to acquit him: He's not guilty."