Reporter Embroiled in Martin Shkreli Saga

Martin Shkreli was always eager to talk, even when it wasn’t in his best interest. That was clear from the very first conversation I had with him. It was January 2015, and he was still a virtual unknown outside of hedge fund, trader, and biotech circles.

At the time, I was a legal reporter for Bloomberg, and I had gotten a tip that the feds were looking into him for fraud. Before publishing a story about the investigation, I reached out to him for comment. I hadn’t anticipated that he, and not a lawyer or some crisis PR representative, would call me back.

“Hi, this is Martin Shkreli,” he announced when I answered my cell phone. He paused for effect. He was sorry to tell me that I had “no story.” Yes, there was trouble at his first pharmaceutical company, Retrophin, but that was old news.

He had already moved on — after being ousted as CEO by the Retrophin board — and had started a new drug company, Turing. He asked me who told me about the criminal probe; I refused to answer. “Oh,” he hissed. “I bet I know.”

Days after I published that piece, he did something wildly unwise for anyone who might possibly be the target of a criminal probe: He trekked down to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn with copies of my story in hand and demanded to discuss it. For multiple hours and without a lawyer to protect him from himself, he talked to two assistant U.S. attorneys, two FBI agents, and a paralegal.

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FBI records reflect that he attempted to convey his side of the story — or really his side of every possible story. He didn’t seem to know which of his many messy or controversial business moves might be considered a crime, so he rambled on about them all.

A month after I broke the story of Martin’s arrest in December 2015, he called me again. I was away from my desk, and he left a voicemail. When I called back, I braced myself, assuming I was about to endure a confrontation — which is typical when journalists speak to the subjects of negative media articles.

But when he answered, his tone was warm. He assured me he wasn’t mad about anything. “It’s been about a year since we last talked, hasn’t it?” he said.

He was doing his own legal research.

As I got to know Martin, I struggled to reconcile what seemed like two completely different Martins: the one in media coverage and the person I had met.

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I looked back at a Bloomberg BusinessWeek profile about Martin, written in 2014 about his move from hedge funds to biotech.

I spoke with the writer to try to get a handle on what I was dealing with, and quizzed him about his interactions with Martin.

Feeling like my instincts were confirmed, I kept going. My goal was to write the “real” story about Martin Shkreli, something that cut through the noise and bridged the divide between how people perceived him and whatever he really was.

People are complex, and their stories can’t be reduced to simple headlines.

There’s often more to the story than what meets the eye, and it’s up to journalists to dig deeper and provide a more detailed understanding of the people and events that shape our world.