Martin Shkreli’s Twitter, YouTube Appear To Have Been Hacked, And It’s Hilarious
What a fall from greatness this week has been for Turing Pharmaceuticals’ CEO Martin Shkreli, 2015’s shoe-in for the “Worst Human Being” award. Shkreli first became known to the public after purchasing the life-saving AIDS drug Daraprim and jacking up the price 5,000 percent. Since then, he spent much of his time actually engaging with people on Twitter taunting the public and journalists alike.
Shkreli’s antics continued as he purchased the only copy of the latest Wu-Tang Clan album, as previously reported by the Inquisitr, for the princely sum of $2 million. He promised Wu-Tang fans that he “may play something special” during a live-stream broadcast post-purchase, then subjected Wu-Tang fans to a stream of his own rambling and screamo music.
“Naw, I’m not going to release the album. Why would I pay millions of dollars just to let everyone listen to it for free?”
He then asked “fans” to help him come up with a list of bands to pay to create albums especially for him.
Then, last week, his Twitter rants were silenced and the internet came together to cheer as Martin Shkreli was, according to Bloomberg, arrested on charges of securities fraud, alongside his lawyer Evan Greebel as an accomplice. Although the two men have since been released on bail — Shkreli on a $5 million bond, Greebel on $1 million — the charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail if proven. Shkreli, naturally, denies everything.
Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers indicated in a press conference that “Shkreli essentially ran his company like a Ponzi scheme where he used each subsequent company to pay off defrauded investors from the prior company.” Shrkeli has since resigned as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals.
Shkreli’s Twitter — which has been renamed “Martin The God” (along with a tweet indicating that he is, in fact, now a god) spent the night retweeting some of the worst burns leveled at him while making a series of increasingly-incomprehensible tweets; the most popular indicated that he would be giving away the Wu-Tang Clan album to someone who retweeted him. His bio was also changed to read “F**k Yall…”
The last tweet sent by the compromised account was Martin’s declaration of godhood, nine hours ago. Presumably, Twitter stepped in and locked down his account before things could degenerate further. Shkreli’s Twitter account did not remain compromised for long.
According to a report from Maxim, Shkreli’s YouTube account was also compromised at the same time, showing similar changes in tone. It’s unknown how far the breach goes, but the fact that multiple services were compromised suggests that someone may have gained access to Shkreli’s email — something that would likely be very problematic for the egotistical billionaire, and which would be seen as deserved schadenfreude by everyone else.
Neither Shkreli, nor his representatives, have commented on the breach as of yet, although most of his accounts appear to be locked down (or their hacker got bored, which seems unlikely.) This suggests that damage control is still underway, and we’ll probably be hearing more about this hack soon.
One thing’s for sure, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
[AP Photo/Craig Ruttle]
