Will School keep its $1 million donation from reviled Martin Shkreli?

Hunter College High School is debating on what to do with a $1 million donation from former student Shkreli, the reviled pharmaceuticals executive who has now become twisted in legal turmoil.

Martin Shkreli, 32, gifted the giant donation to the elite Manhattan school in March, making it the largest individual donation in its history. The eventual Turing Pharmaceuticals chief didn’t even graduate from Hunter. Rather, he left early with bad grades only to earn a diploma elsewhere, but said he still felt a kinship for the school. The school’s principal, Dr. Fisher, shared that he was “thrilled” by the gift.

But that was months before Martin Shkreli suddenly transformed into one of America’s most hated figures, after he bought a life-saving AIDS pill and jacked the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill overnight. The move earned him national contempt, but his real problems came crashing down when he was arrested for securities fraud in an alleged Ponzi scheme from an old hedge fund.

Shkreli, an arrogant pharmaceutical executive who came under strong criticism for orchestrating the price hiking of vital drugs, denied securities fraud charges on Thursday following an early morning arrest and was freed on a $5 million bond.

After Turing faced broad criticism from all corners, such as politicians, advocates, and healthcare providers, CEO Shkreli said in September he would cut the price. “We have agreed to lower the price of Daraprim to a point that is more affordable,” he said in an interview with the TV channel ABC News that aired September 22 this year. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Even though the young man has earned a rare level of disgrace for his brazenness in business and his personal life, what he was charged with had absolutely nothing to do with skyrocketing drug prices. Martin Shkreli is accused of repeatedly losing money for investors and lying to his potential customers about it, illegally taking assets derived from one of his companies to pay off his another company.

“Martin 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 early this week.

Agents of the Federal bureau of investigation (FBI) arrested Shkreli at his Midtown Manhattan apartment and forced him just to walk through the crowd of media photographers outside its headquarters.

Evan Greebel, a New York lawyer who is alleged in the federal indictment to have helped him in his schemes, was also arrested and charged. Like Shkreli, the lawyer pleaded not guilty, and he was freed on a $1 million bond. Both men and their lawyers declined to comment after their court appearance. However, Shkreli has claimed the fraud accusations against him are baseless and without merit.

Days before his arrest, Shkreli appeared to flirt with a female Hunter student on a video stream.