Several potential jurors told a New York judge they can't be fair toward a former pharmaceutical company CEO who became a pariah after jacking up the cost of a life-saving medication.

One woman said Monday that she knew Martin Shkreli as "the most hated man in America" for his price gouging. The judge dismissed her and several others after they made negative comments about Shkreli as jury selection got underway for his securities fraud trial.

Shkreli — the pharmaceutical entrepreneur called a "pharma bro" for raising the price of a life-saving drug by 5,000 per cent — is accused of running a Ponzi-like scheme at his former hedge fund and a drug company he founded.

Prosecutors say he lied to investors in the hedge fund and siphoned millions of dollars in assets from biopharmaceutical company Retrophin, Inc. to repay them. He has pleaded not guilty.

The trial, which will be heard by U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, is expected to last four to six weeks.

"I'm excited," Shkreli said of the trial in a brief phone call last week to The Associated Press. "I can't wait."

Opening statements could occur as early as Tuesday.

Shkreli, a boyish-looking 34, outraged patients and U.S. lawmakers by raising the price of anti-parisitic drug Daraprim to $750 US a pill, from $13.50, in 2015, when he was chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals.

When members of the U.S. Congress demanded to know why, he went on Twitter and called them "imbeciles."

The charges that led to his arrest in December 2015 are not related to Turing, but focus on Shkreli's management at Retrophin and the hedge fund MSMB Capital Management between 2009 and 2012.

Prosecutors said Shkreli lied about MSMB's finances to lure investors, and that after he lost millions of dollars through bad trades, he looted a second pharmaceutical company — Retrophin, which he founded in 2011 — for $11 million to pay them back.

The defence has argued that he had good intentions.

"Everybody got paid back in this case," Shkreli's lawyer Benjamin Brafman said. "Whatever else he did wrong, he ultimately made them whole."

High profile complicates defence

He has also continued to court the public eye, especially through social media, sometimes complicating his defence.

Since his arrest, Shkreli has flaunted purchases including a Second World War-era Enigma code-breaking machine, a Picasso painting and unreleased albums by Wu-Tang Clan and Lil Wayne.

In April, he offered $40,000 US to a Princeton University student who solved a mathematical proof. In May, he pledged on Facebook to pay $100,000 US for tips leading to the arrest of the person who killed former Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich.

At a hearing last Monday, prosecutors cited public boasts about his wealth in refusing to reduce Shkreli's bail from $5 million to $2 million US, as he had requested, citing the need to pay taxes and legal bills.

Shkreli was banned from Twitter in January for harassing a female journalist who wrote an op-ed piece for Teen Vogue criticizing U.S. President Donald Trump, whom Shkreli has supported.

Shkreli's attention-seeking has at times exasperated Brafman, who urged Matsumoto last week not to give much weight to his client's "preposterous statements."

'Hope to see you homeless'

The defence has floated the possibility that Shkreli will testify about how he grew up in a working-class Albanian family in Brooklyn, taught himself chemistry, interned at a financial firm founded by CNBC's Jim Cramer and struck out on his own to become a rising star in biotechnology startups.

He wanted to develop new life-saving drugs after seeing "several classmates and other children he knew struck down by debilitating disease," court papers say.

Prosecutors call it a ploy to portray Shkreli as "a Horatio Alger-like figure who, through hard work and intelligence, is in a position to do great things if only the jury would ignore the evidence and base its verdict on sympathy." The real Shkreli was a con man often undone by his own mouth, they say.

The government has cited claims by one of Shkreli's former employees that Shkreli harassed his family in a dispute over shares of stock.

"I hope to see you and your four children homeless and will do whatever I can to assure this," Shkreli wrote the employee's wife, according to court filings.