Humanigen Inc (HGENQ)

[shajandr]

You should tell the DOJ that. They don't charge it as a Ponzi scheme.

They did for Bernie Madoff (see para 5 et seq.):

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/KonigsbergIndictment09262013.pdf

Whereas in the Shkreli case, the prosecutors don't call it a Ponzi scheme - they call it "like a Ponzi scheme"

“Shkreli essentially ran his company like a Ponzi scheme where he used each subsequent company to pay off defrauded investors from the prior company,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said at a press conference.

...

Shkreli was indicted for securities fraud and conspiracy in a series of dealings that federal prosecutors likened to a “Ponzi scheme.”

...

At a news conference Thursday afternoon, U.S. Attorney Robert Capers in Brooklyn said Shkreli treated his companies as a "personal piggy bank" and ran them "like a Ponzi scheme."

I can go on with more quotes from the DOJ, butt as a lawyer words mean things - and the weasel word "like" or "essentially" is very different than claiming "he ran the businesses AS a Ponzi scheme".

Even his indictment doesn't say that (as Madoff's does). It uses the same weasel words.

So you are claiming he is being prosecuted FOR a Ponzi scheme, and even the US attorney and others in the DOJ are not alleging that.

The securities fraud and wire fraud he may have done certainly can be CLAIMED to be LIKE a Ponzi scheme, butt it is nott at all the same as real Ponzi schemes, like Madoff, which simly reroute cash from new investors (or new investments from old ones) to pay off in cash old investors.

So, you should compare Shkreli for sentences for securities fraud cases like many pennyscams - which use multiple corporations to shuttle assets around and issue illegal 'settlements' to shareholders so the issued shares can be immediately delegended and dumped. He is NOT been formally claimed to have run a Ponzi scheme, as Allen Stanford and Madoff and others did.

The most even the prosecutors themselves will say (and these are the folks who will stretch the line as far as they can!) is that what Shkreli did was LIKE a Ponzi scheme. Butt nott that it WAS a Ponzi scheme.