Martin Shkreli's Talk of Seducing Straight Men Disturbed His Gay Investor

A gay investor in Martin Shkreli's company has spoken out about some queer behavior.

In his testimony Monday at Shkreli's fraud trial, Steven Richardson, 63, recounted how the 33-year-old "pharma bro" would often tell him that he wanted to have sex with male coworkers and restaurant waiters.

"I was gay and had a partner, and he was starting to say certain things of a gay nature that worried me a bit," Richardson said at the trial, in remarks reported on by CNBC. "I thought maybe he was saying things to me because he thought I would want to hear them."

"They just felt a bit uncomfortable to me. He was saying things to me, like, 'Maybe I'll have sex with a guy in the office,' or we'd be at a restaurant and there'd be a waiter and he'd say , 'Maybe I should hook up with him.'"

When Richardson pointed out that Shkreli's colleague "was straight and had a girlfriend," Shkreli replied, "Don't worry, I'll make it happen."

The comments made Richardson "uncomfortable." In 2010, he even took Shkreli aside during a visit to his apartment to straighten things out.

"I said, 'Come with me' and walked him into the bedroom, and I sat him on the bed," Richardson recounted. "I said, 'You're here, you are sitting in a gay man's bedroom ... do you have any physical feeling to me?'"

"No, I like you a lot," Shkreli replied.

Richardson said that, afterward, Shkreli began to discuss women he was interested in -- and even offered Richardson the opportunity to be his "wingman."

Richardson, a retired executive of American Express and a former chairman of Shkreli's pharmaceutical company, Retrophin, invested $400,000 in MSMB Capital in 2009 and 2010. Prosecutors are accusing Shkreli of misappropriating funds from this hedge fund.

Shkreli infamously jacked the price of a medication for an AIDS-related condition from $13.50 to $750 in 2016. In the past, he was suspended from Twitter for harassing Teen Vogue writer Lauren Duca. He also trolled the LGBT community earlier this year by promoting the fake identity of "clovergender," which ridiculed transgender and gender-nonbinary people.