U.S. judge orders ex-drug CEO to turn over 7.3 million dollars in fraud case

NEW YORK, March 5 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. judge on Monday ordered Martin Shkreli, former CEO of a drug company, to hand over more than 7.3 million U.S. dollars in assets for his role in defrauding investors.

The order, issued by District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in Brooklyn, New York, would allow the government to go after Shkreli's assets. Shkreli, 34, was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals and was found guilty by a jury in last August of unrelated securities fraud charges brought against him in December 2015.

However, the judge stayed the execution of her order, and the seizure of the substitute assets pending the resolution of Shkreli's planned appeal of his conviction.

Shkreli, who became famous in 2015 for raising the price of the anti-parasite drug Daraprim by more than 5,000 percent, has been in jail since last September. He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 9 for lying to investors in his hedge funds about his track record and performance as well as a fraud that involved a company he founded. Enditem