The much-maligned pharmaceutical businessman Martin Shkreli was put in solitary confinement earlier this month at Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, New Jersey, according to two sources familiar with the situation. The Wall Street Journal described how Shkreli was using a contraband phone to run his pharma business from prison.
The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) didn’t confirm that Shkreli had been placed in solitary confinement and stated that it would not release information regarding “an individual inmate’s conditions of confinement.” However, it did confirm that the issues raised in the Journal article were “under investigation.”
“When there are allegations of misconduct, they are thoroughly investigated, and appropriate action is taken if allegations are sustained,” a spokesperson for the BOP added.
While Shkreli’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, declined to comment on his client’s status, one source close to Shkreli’s legal team said the fraudster was in the special housing unit (SHU) for 10 days after the article was published on March 7, but the source had not received an update on his status.
According to Justin Liverman, a fellow inmate, Shkreli was in fact put in solitary and remained in there as of Sunday. “Martin is in the SHU,” Liverman told Forbes.
According to the Journal, Shkreli was operating his business using a contraband cellphone, which is against Fort Dix’s rules. Liverman says it isn’t difficult to get your hands on a cellphone while in prison. Fort Dix is like a “cellphone heaven…. There are hundreds of phones on this compound. You can either rent phone time or buy one for $1,000,” says Liverman, who faces a five-year sentence for involvement in the hacker crew Crackas With Attitude.
According to Forbes, Fort Dix has had problems with contraband phones in the past. Within the last year, guards caught inmates sharing child pornography using smuggled devices. In a separate incident, prisoner Omar Adonis Guzman-Martine was sentenced to an additional 30 years for using a cellphone to plan an attack on his girlfriend and murder her boyfriend.
