The now notorious ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, named in 2015 as the most hated man in America, was found guilty of fraud earlier this week. Jurors convicted him of 3 out of the 8 charges brought before him. But none of these charges, or even this trial, was in any way related to the original reason he gained such celebrity status. In 2015, Shkreli’s company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, purchased the rights of a drug named Daraprim, a life-saving antiparasitic drug used by AIDS patients. He then hiked up the price of this drug by 5000%, from $13.50 to $750 per dose, and in doing so he became the face of corporate greed.

But shockingly this has nothing do with why he was on trial or why he was convicted. Jurors convicted Shkreli for lying to investors over two hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare, and then proceeding to steal from his previous pharmaceutical company, Retrophin, to pay them back.

This is not the reason that this case was a critical one, not only for pharmaceutical companies but for the American Health Care System. It brought to the forefront the fact that his hiking prices to such a ridiculous level was not illegal, at the most, it made him an asshole. Due to the fact that pharmaceutical pricing is not a federally regulated enterprise in the United Sates, it has never been and still is not illegal for such companies to artificially inflate prices of any medication of their choosing. After the initial statement from President Trump that Shkreli was "a spoiled brat," the current Congress remains completely silent on the issue in both their failed healthcare bills.

According to BBC, "early reports suggest that the Trump plan hews closely to proposals favored by the pharmaceutical industry - and could actually increase the cost of drugs. For example, it would strengthen drug companies' rights overseas.”

Shkreli’s price hike also raises another question. Was he simply a moron, or did he have other intentions? The reason being that his decision to hike the prices by this steep a level had to be either misguided or perfectly planned. According to The New Yorker, a critic argued Shkreli’s plan to raise prices as a “terrible idea,” not least because such an ostentatious plan posed “a serious risk of bringing the entire pricing structure of the industry under much heavier scrutiny and regulation.” In fact, one of his own executives, in an email, informed him that this wasn’t a good idea, as it attracted media attention and wasn’t good for investors. A better CEO, or a truly greedy one, would have kept a virtually anonymous profile. There would be no gigantic hikes in pricing, but rather slow calculated increases that flew under the media and the people's radar, as pretty much every other pharmaceutical company does.

Why risk the damage that such a villainous move would very predictably have put him on the radar and opened him up to scrutiny when there were so many better ways to go about it? If the decision really was genuine, then Shkreli is not nearly as much of a genius as he thinks himself to be. But if the purpose was to bring national media attention to an issue and open up a dialogue about regulation and pharmaceuticals then it was a great way to go.