Wu-Tang Forever In March of 2014, the producer of Wu-Tang
Clan decided that it would be a sensational idea if the band recorded a 31-track album
named Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.
This album would come in a hand-carved box with a book filled with lyrics and notes about
the songs.
The catch was that they were only going to make one record, and they were going to sell
it to the highest bidder.
Only when they finally announced that Wu-Tang Clan had sold the album, they didn’t want
to report to who they had traded it to.
The question is, why?
Why didn’t Wu-Tang Clan want their fans to know who had received the album?
Who was the person spending $2 million on such a prized treasure?
For those who don’t know, the Wu-Tang Clan was a popular hip-hop band made up of 9 members.
Before this album, the band was losing momentum.
So their producer, RZA, decided that the album would be the perfect idea to bring back the
fame.
The Wu-Tang album garnered a lot of attention from people, including millionaires, billionaires,
trophy hunters, and a 32-year-old business owner named Martin Shkreli.
Martin Shkreli
Shkreli’s parents immigrated to Brooklyn, New York, from Albania.
As janitors, they worked hard to put their son through school.
Shkreli was an extremely bright kid, idolizing scientists and skipping grades.
He also loved music, and that would follow him into adulthood.
While paving his way into wall street, Shkreli made a name for himself on social media.
Twitter was a place where he could show his “wealthy bachelor” side.
Shkreli loved to portray himself as a young self-starter who lived a life of luxury.
He often posted photos of himself holding expensive wines and standing beside helicopters.
On youtube, he created live streams where he taught others how to analyze stocks, explained
how drugs work, and often made comments about things happening in the world.
His youtube persona was his nerdy side.
Viewers often saw him twirling in his chair, twitching, and talking fast as if he had some
form of social anxiety while filming.
It showed that he was relatable as a person, and he wasn’t unattainable.
Overall, it was hard not to think of Shkreli as a heroic rags-to-riches story.
A poor boy with immigrant parents who eventually became a notorious hedge-fund manager.
It gave young people the idea that they could also become wealthy.
Wall Street is famous for being the place where you can earn big bucks.
And sitting at the top was Shkreli.
But they say the higher you sit, the harder you fall.
Pharma Background
He had founded two hedge funds before starting Retrophin, a pharmaceutical company.
During this time, Shkreli became controversial and liked to purchase cheap lesser-known drugs
to raise their prices significantly.
In 2014, Retrophin purchased a drug called Tiopronin.
Tiopronin is used to treat cystinuria, a rare painful kidney complication that creates kidney
stones made of pure cystine.
Overnight, Tiopronin jumped from $1.50 per pill to $30.
Now, this is nothing new.
Other pharmaceutical companies raise the prices of their drugs while putting them through
new test trials and getting them reapproved by the FDA.
The issue here is that Shkreli didn’t do that.
They purchased a drug and raised the price without trying to make the medication better
in any way.
But you know what they say, criminals tend to have a pattern, and we’ll see that pattern
soon.
After some controversies with his employees, Shkreli left Retrophin, leading to him starting
a new company called Turing Pharmaceuticals.
In August of 2015, during the closing of the Wu-Tang album deal, it came out that Turing
Pharmaceuticals had purchased the drug Daraprim and raised its price from $13.50 a pill to
$750.
Sound familiar?
Daraprim is a drug used to treat toxoplasmosis, a rare infection caused by a parasite, the
most common parasite in the world.
This infection can lead to stillbirths and miscarriages, and it can also lead to blindness
and even death for people with weakened immune systems.
So when Shkreli raised the prices that high, it put pregnant women, the elderly, and people
living with HIV at extreme risk of being unable to afford their medication.
Shkreli claimed that he raised the price so that Turing could have more money to research
other drugs that could help with toxoplasmosis.
Looking at his past with Retrophin, it seemed more like an excuse than reasoning.
So it’s safe to say that the public was outraged.
Shkreli became the most hated man in America.
Presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump were even
commenting on Shkreli's outrageousness.
It made sense why Wu-Tang Clan didn’t want to let fans know that the owner of their rarest
album was a man like this.
Prison
And just when Shrekli was at the height of his game, it all came crumbling down.
In 2018, the board of Retrophin sued Shkreli for $65 Million, claiming that he was mismanaging
the company's assets and using the company’s money toward his hedge funds.
So the Wu-Tang album, the Diaprim price hike, and being sued by his old pharmaceutical company?
August of 2018 was a busy month for Shkreli.
Prosecutors claimed that Shrekli defrauded millions of dollars from his investors and
only repaid them using Retrophin stocks.
They wanted a 15-year sentence minimum, arguing that Shkreli was a danger to the people and
they needed protection from him.
Shkreli’s defense team thought that Shkreli had the potential to do good.
They also claimed that he shouldn’t be convicted just because of his reputation and past controversies.
In the end, the judge sentenced Shkreli to 7 years in prison.
Afterward, he was to have three years of probation and had to pay a $75,000 fine.
When the jury gave the verdict, Shkreli cried dramatically, promising that he would start
contributing to society.
He said he wasn’t a victim and that the only one at fault was him.
Shkreli also claimed that he didn’t do it for the money.
It’s an interesting thing to say coming from a man who hiked up drug prices on two
separate occasions.
Album Aftermath
And if you’re angry about the Wu-Tang album, don't worry.
The government confiscated the album and sold it to a new buyer.
Although they never announced how much money they made off of the album, it’s important
to note that Shkreli’s judge had ordered him to forfeit $7.4 million.
She said that if he didn’t pay, he would have to give up his Picasso painting, a Lil
Wayne album called “The Carter V,” along with the $5 million Shkreli posted for his
bail.
The sale of the Wu-Tang Album had repaid the $7.4 million debt in full.
It shows that for a man still worth $70 million, $7.4 million is a slap on the wrist.
Christie Smythe
While in prison, a journalist named Christie Smythe had come to interview him.
At this point, she was the sole journalist at Bloomberg News to cover his story.
After months of meeting up for interviews, Smythe had developed feelings for him.
And once she saw emails exchanged between her and Shkreli in the courtroom, she realized
that she couldn’t provide an unbiased account of him anymore.
She requested that Bloomberg give the story to a new journalist, and shortly after, she
quit the company altogether.
Smythe’s husband was understandably upset, telling her she was throwing her career away
over Shkreli.
The fights got so bad that her husband suggested couples counseling to overcome their fights.
Smythe admitted to being 52 minutes late to their first 1-hour session because she was
visiting Shkreli in prison.
Although the two attended multiple sessions afterward, their relationship inevitably ended
in divorce.
In December 2020, Smythe reached out to Stephanie Clifford at Elle magazine.
She wanted to go public about her relationship with Shkreli, and Clifford suspected that
it was because Smythe was looking for some sort of power in the relationship.
After all, Smythe was at the beck and call of Shkreli.
Smythe even admitted to Clifford that she remembered her professor telling her that
she would ruin her life over Shkreli.
When Clifford interviewed Shkreli for the article, he said he wished Smythe the best
in life.
Smythe stated that she knew what that meant, and she sat while Clifford practically gave
her the break-up news.
Even after the breakup, Smythe didn’t regret her choices.
Despite people claiming that Shkreli manipulated her, she doesn’t believe he did.
Although Smythe insisted that her life improved after meeting Shkreli, it’s hard to imagine
that as accurate, seeing how now she has to start over in a new company without the man
she left her husband for.
Release
To talk about another slap on the wrist, Shkreli didn’t have to fulfill his 7-year sentence.
Back in March, they released him from prison due to good behavior.
He’s now in a New York halfway house, only having served four and a half years.
We expect his release to be on September 14th.
The internet exploded when, on the same day of his release, a Twitter user found that
Shkreli had created an account on Bumble.
Being on a dating app solidified that he and Smythe are still not together and that he
has no interest in rekindling that flame.
Although he hasn’t confirmed or denied this account being real, it’s convenient that
it was created on the same day as his release.
According to Smythe, she still has feelings for him and has even frozen her eggs to have
a potential family with him in the future.
She bears no ill-will toward him and sees a lifelong friendship between them.
Shkreli Aftermath
And if you thought the story couldn’t get even better, buckle up.
In July, Shkreli started an online company called Druglike.
They barred Shkreli from being in the pharmaceuticals industry for the rest of his life, but he
claimed he still wanted to help cut drug prices.
Truly a character arc indeed.
Druglike is a platform where drug companies can create hypothetical chemical compounds
to create new potential drugs.
Along with Druglike, Shkreli also announced his new cryptocurrency, Martin Shkreli Inu.
That’s right!
Pharma Bro transformed into Crypto Bro!
It started when Shkreli tuned into a twitter audio event where he talked about his theories
for what will happen in the crypto world.
People thought he was very knowledgeable and welcomed him into the community.
After his dramatic show during his sentencing, Christie Smythe raving about how he was a
good guy and continuously talking about how he learned from his mistakes and wants to
do good, people bought into it.
Literally.
Then on August 15th, Martin Shkreli Inu dropped to 90% of its value.
Someone had sold more than 160 billion tokens, and the wallet that those tokens belonged
to was none other than Martin Shkreli’s.
In the crypto world, this is called a rug pull.
You wait until your coin is at a high price, then sell off what you have in your wallet,
essentially tanking the value and leaving everyone else with scraps.
It’s immoral but not illegal, meaning it was the perfect resource for Shkreli to rebuild
his fortune.
Bloomberg News did reach out to him on discord, and an account believed to be him claimed
that he got hacked and that an investigation had started.
While someone could’ve hacked Shkreli, it’s also not likely.
Remember that Shkreli is brilliant, especially when it comes to technology.
He likely learned about the rug pull scam while he studied cryptocurrency in prison,
and it wouldn’t be shocking if it came to light that he pulled the rug himself.
After seeing all the pieces, it’s hard not to think that he didn’t plan everything
to make the people believe he was a changed man.
After all, people do describe him as a master manipulator.
And after watching him defraud investors, hike up drug prices, convince a woman to quit
her job and divorce her husband, and potentially scam cryptocurrency users, it’s hard not
to believe it.
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And let us know in the comment section if you think pharmaceutical companies should
be allowed to charge whatever they want for life saving drugs!