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Fortune
Fortune
Ben Weiss

‘Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli’s quest for a shelter cat doomed by TikTok braggadocio—and a lie on his application

A black-and-gray cat is juxtaposed with repeated photos of Martin Shkreli. (Credit: Shkreli: Drew Angerer—Getty Images; Cat: Courtesy of AdvoCat Rescue)

"Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli may have gotten some measure of comeuppance when he was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud in 2018. Or when he was ordered to pay $64.6 million in January 2022 for hiking up the price of Daraprim, an antiparasitic drug often prescribed to immunocompromised patients. Or when he was forced to relinquish the world’s rarest Wu-Tang Clan album, which he reportedly acquired for $2 million, along with the sole rights to listen to the beloved '90s hip-hop group’s latest offering.  

But Shkreli was released from prison three years early in 2022; hasn’t paid his $64.6 million, per court filings; and started what appears to be another pharmaceutical company, despite a court-ordered lifetime ban from the industry. Now he may have gotten a small dose of karma: He’s having trouble adopting a cat, according to documents obtained by Fortune from an adoption agency based in Queens, New York.

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