Reporter Quit Her Job and Left Her Husband to Date ‘Pharma Bro’ Millionaire Martin Shkreli

I spotted the most INSANE article on Elle today. Not insane, because it’s badly written. But insane, because it’s written so well, that it gives you pure insight into the mind of a woman who went by societal rules, suppressed her desires, and settled for the American Dream of the white picket fence life AND still wasn’t happy.

It’s a story about Martin Shkreli’s “fiancé.” Martin is the man who famously raised the price of an important drug to astronomical rates, in order to pay back his investors.

The article starts with detailing Christie Smythe, as she travels from Park Slope downtown to her desk at Brooklyn’s federal court, in a pressroom hidden on the far side of a snack bar. It’s the beginning story of a woman who was about to find her “star.”

Via ELLE Magazine:

“Smythe, who covered white-collar crime for Bloomberg News, wore mostly black and gray, and usually skipped makeup. She and her husband, who worked in finance, spent their free time cooking, walking Smythe’s rescue dog, and going on literary pub crawls. “We had the perfect little Brooklyn life,” Smythe says.

Then she chucked it all.

Over the course of nine months, beginning in July 2018, Smythe quit her job, moved out of the apartment, and divorced her husband. 

Smythe a high performing New York journalist, threw herself at Martin, as he ghosted her, treated her like dust, toyed on her self-esteem and dollied career advancement in her eyes like a carrot on a stick. As Smythe covered Martin’s trial for Bloomberg, the story shows the perfect seduction weighting out.

THE SEDUCTION

“He kept toying with me for a while,” Smythe says. He would dangle an on-the-record interview and then grant one to one of her competitors. Smythe had to remain cordial; Shkreli kept making news—he bought the Wu-Tang album, he smirked when testifying before Congress about drug pricing—and coverage of him at Bloomberg fell to her. One evening when Smythe called him for comment, a tiny shift occurred. Shkreli was looking for a new lawyer and asked her for advice. She felt “flattered,” she says, and offered her opinion. “It really felt like he didn’t have anybody to talk to that he could bounce ideas off of,” Smythe says. “I was like, ‘All right. I guess I can do that.’ ” He sounded “ragged and fragile, and I got concerned he would commit suicide because all this stuff was all happening at once.” Still, her job came first: She pre-wrote an obituary for Shkreli in case he did, in fact, kill himself.

Smythe fell in love with the Pharma King, and eventually quit her job and left her husband who warned her that Martin was using her.

“I fell down the rabbit hole,” Smythe told Elle of her life-changing relationship. “I’m happy here. I feel like I have purpose.”

COMPLEX wrote:

Before getting entangled with one of the most hated people in the world, Smythe lived “the perfect little Brooklyn life” with her dog and husband. Now she works out of her Harlem basement apartment waiting for Shkreli — a man best known for jacking up the price of life-saving drugs. She also froze her eggs to make sure they would be able to have children once her “life partner” is released from prison. 

As I was reading the article, my senses told me that Smythe was bored with her neat, sweet little life that she’d worked so hard to accomplish. She wanted excitement. What miss Smythe really wanted in this world, is to be a star. She never wanted to be unknown. That’s why her soul chose to work for Bloomberg in the first place.

Smythe remembers her professor telling her, “You’re going to ruin your life.”

Now let’s go to this part of the Elle article.

“Through the summer, Shkreli kept up his game of cat and mouse, offering Smythe tantalizing hints about evidence, then ghosting her for weeks over some perceived offense. In fall 2016, Smythe started the prestigious Knight-Bagehot Journalism Fellowship at Columbia University. That spring, she wrote about Shkreli for a class, “describing how manipulative he was to reporters,” says her professor, Michael Shapiro. She wrote “quite candidly about how he had so successfully drawn her in.” Shapiro worried that Shkreli was stringing Smythe along in order to make “her evermore grateful for access.” And “once that happens, you’re at a profound disadvantage as a reporter,” Shapiro says. She showed the essay to Shkreli, and after he read it, he told her, “You should write the book”—as in, a biography and memoir of Shkreli. Shapiro felt that the journalist/source relationship was already muddy, and cautioned Smythe against writing a book on someone “so manipulative.” Smythe remembers Shapiro telling her, “You’re going to ruin your life.”

“Maybe I was being charmed by a master manipulator,” Smythe tells me. But she felt she could maintain control. She had wanted to write a book since she was a kid and decided to do it, so she found an agent and started drafting a proposal. In April 2017, Shkreli invited Smythe to a talk he was giving to a Princeton University student corporate finance club as fodder for the book. The club sent an SUV to pick them up; a dean shook their hands. Smythe felt a stir when Shkreli mentioned her: “Even if you find an honest reporter—I made friends with one, she’s here right now,” he told the audience. Afterward, Shkreli met with students at a brewpub. “Martin’s mobbed with kids, people talking to him, and he’s really animated and excited,” she remembers. When Shkreli went to the bathroom, Smythe stepped in to entertain the students. “It almost felt like I was a political wife,” she says.

SMYTHE’S HUSBAND WARNED HER THAT SHE WAS BEING USED

“He’s just using you,”Smythe’s husband had told her early on, after a late-night call with Shkreli. “For what?” she had replied. The argument escalated. Her husband felt she was risking her journalistic reputation by “getting too sucked into this bad person,” Smythe says. She felt he was trying to micromanage her career.”

And in the end, Martin is no longer talking to Smythe because of the Elle article. She sits by the phone daily, HOPING, WAITING on him to call.

I have no other words to describe the story of Smythe. If you go to Elle and read the full article you will see the manipulation and seduction of a woman who really wanted to live her life in the spotlight, and is now madly in love with a man who doesn’t want her.

I mean you know a man doesn’t want you, if he’s sitting in prison for 7-years and still won’t talk to you. But the consciousness of a woman like Smythe who is EDUCATED, but has no street game or knowledge of men is fascinating to watch.

Martin Shkreli’s networth is $27.1 Million dollars, but that doesn’t seem to be benefitting Smythe.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?