Martin Shkreli, a former pharma company CEO who became renowned for demanding massive price spikes on life-saving drugs, has been freed from prison early.

After being found guilty of scamming investors in 2017, Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison.

After photographs of him spread on social media, his release became known.

He has been sent to a halfway home and is expected to be released in September.

He was released after completing “all programs that permitted his prison term to be lowered,” according to his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman.

Shkreli was found guilty in 2017 of defrauding investors by lying about the performance of two hedge funds he managed and then stealing from his medicine firm Retrophin to repay them.

In 2023, he was scheduled to be freed from jail. Requests for early release have previously been rebuffed.

The trial came after Shkreli gained popularity in 2015 after his business hiked the price of the long-established parasitic infection treatment Daraprim from $13.50 (£10.93) to $750 (£607).

The contentious decision earned him the moniker “Pharma bro” for his unashamed defense of it.

A Manhattan judge ruled the maneuver, as well as others he organized to prevent competitors from making the drug, violated US competition rules earlier this year. He was banned from the industry for the rest of his life and fined $64.6 million.