A New York journalist fell in love with the famous “Pharma Bro”, Martin Shkreli, and gave up her “perfect” life: she quit her job and divorced her husband, she revealed in a new report.
Former Bloomberg News reporter Christie Smythe, 38, first spoke about her relationship with the convicted fraud in an article in Elle magazine published Sunday.
“I fell through the rabbit hole,” Smythe told the magazine of his life-changing romance with 37-year-old Shkreli, who is serving a seven-year sentence for swindling hedge fund investors he operated.
“I am just happy to be here. I feel like I have a purpose, ”he said.
But your love story may not have a happy ending. Smythe has not seen his friend in more than a year due to COVID-19 security protocols in prisons.
Now, Smythe worked remotely for a journalistic start-up from her Harlem basement apartment, which she waited for in Shkreli.
“I’ll try,” he said. “I’ll be here.”
The Kansas City, Missouri native first crossed paths with Shkreli in 2015, when she learned she was under federal investigation for violations of the securities law.
At the time, Smythe was married and had “the perfect little Brooklyn life,” he said.
He described his growing involvement with Shkreli over the next few years as “incremental decisions, in which you are slowly boiling in the bathtub.”
Shkreli earned the nickname “The World’s Most Hated Man” for raising the price of AIDS drug Daraprim by nearly 5,000 percent in August 2015 and was convicted of securities fraud in 2017 after ‘a trial that caught the headlines.
When Smythe separated from her husband, she had been visiting Shkreli in prison for months, even getting a license so she could drive him to see after he was transferred to a Pennsylvania prison.
In the summer of 2018, Smythe left Bloomberg for his connection to Shkreli. Shortly afterwards, “I told Martin I loved him” in a prison visiting room that smelled of chicken wings, he reminded Elle.
“He told me he loved me too,” Smythe said, and the two kissed.
He added: “It’s hard to think of a time when I felt happier.”
The couple has been debating their children’s first and last names, and Smythe said she even froze the eggs for fear she was too old to have children by the time her “life partner” was released.
Her now ex-husband had warned her that Shkreli “only used her” and that she risked her journalistic reputation by “aspiring too much of this bad person.”
Smythe even admitted that, “Maybe it made me love a master manipulator.”
Public hatred of Shkreli is well documented. Some 134 possible jurors were expelled from his trial as they described him as “bad” and said he “looks abnormal,” The Post then reported.
He was also known to look for journalists who covered the trial, buy URLs on behalf of two, including a Post journalist, and offer to sell the domains for $ 12,000.
The insulted pharmaceutical executive even once said that if he were acquitted, “fk” would be a freelance writer who had rejected his advances.
But Smythe defended his behavior in front of Elle, saying he “trolls because he’s anxious … He really, really wants to be someone.”
In April, Shkreli requested early release from prison because of the coronavirus and his lawyers revealed he had a promise, requesting that he serve the rest of his sentence at his Manhattan apartment to work. in an alleged COVID-19 cure.
Although her lawyers described her as Shkreli’s future girlfriend, Smythe said they are actually “life partners.”
However, it seems that Smythe talking about the love affair may have spilled cold water in their romance.
A statement her friend made to Elle said, “Mr. Shkreli wishes Mrs. Smythe the best of luck in her future endeavors.”
Hearing her separate words, Smythe, who has sold the film’s rights to a book proposal about Shkreli, said quietly, “It’s sweet,” the magazine reported.
“He’s the one who says,‘ You’ll live your life and we just won’t be together. That maybe I’ll get my book and that our paths … fork, ”Smythe continued, booting.