A day after Martin Shkreli’s legal team declared they wouldn’t be calling any witnesses, a Brooklyn judge made an uncharacteristic joke in shooting down their motion to toss the case.
Shkreli’s defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said a conspiracy count charged in the indictment against his client reminded him of the 1980s-era Wendy’s “Where’s the beef” commercial.
A typically serious Brooklyn federal court judge Kiyo Matsumoto quipped, “I believe it’s a ‘nothing-burger,’ as they say these days.”
Realizing what she’d just said, the jurist looked out across the laughing courtroom gallery and clarified: “I’m not saying it is.” The reference, which left a huge grin on Shkreli’s face, called upon testimony that the fund was at one point doing so poorly it focused on a single stock, Rick’s Cabaret–which operates jiggle joints.
But Matsumoto even went so far as to make a second joke as she mentioned a staffer at one of Shkreli’s hedge funds–calling the entity “the strip-club hedge fund.”
Summations in Shkreli’s case are expected to begin Thursday.
The jury is slotted to get the case Friday and the legal community is split on the outcome.
One attorney assured The Post Shkreli would be convicted — simply because he’s “The Most Hated Man in America.”
“At the end of the day, juries often convict people they don’t like, and we have a defendant who — even thought the judge moved heaven and earth to try and ferret out jurors who were biased against him — is largely reviled,” said Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago securities lawyer who has been following the case closely.
“It is impossible for these jurors not to see a repugnant portrayal of this defendant,” said Stoltmann, who added the evidence weighs large against Shkreli in favor of conviction.
“[Prosecutors] have documentary evidence, including emails, with respect to the alleged parades of horribles that he engaged in,” the lawyer said. “Just because there wasn’t a victim doesn’t mean there wasn’t a crime.”
Shkreli’s defense strategy has hinged on the idea that everyone who invested with him made money, and therefore the alleged $11 million ponzi scheme was a victim-less crime.
Stuart D. Meissner thinks the jury won’t be able to get past that notion, which the defense has been driving home since the first day of the five-week trial.
“If I was a betting person, I would be betting on an acquittal,” the New York City-based laywer told The Post.
“While there may have been a crime, it will be difficult to get a jury to grasp that there was a crime when no one lost any money,” he said thoughtfully. “It all comes down to who is on the jury panel.”
Meissner says he doesn’t think Shkreli’s notoriety will play a role at all, given that defense attorney Ben Brafman has been brutally honest about the “Pharma Bro’s” “dysfunctional personality.”
“I think [Brafman] has effectively immunized the jury from all the negativity surrounding Mr. Shkreli,” Meissner said. “He’s been putting that front and center.”
If convicted, Shkreli faces up to 20 years behind bars.
