Scamfluencers - There’s Something About Martin | Part I

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

With his uncanny gift for shorting stocks and predicting the market, Martin Shkreli becomes a finance wunderkind almost right out of college. He experiments with hedge funds and eventually starts his own Pharma company, raising millions of dollars from high-profile investors. But when his Twitter antics and social media trolling begin to raise red flags, Martin’s reputation tanks. And after he price-gouges a life-saving drug, he goes from finance bro to the most hated man in America. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to scam influencers add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Aggie! Hey, baby. Okay, so who do you think is someone that everyone, everywhere, no matter what their political affiliation or moral alignment, can agree sucks. I don't know. This is a very random answer, but I feel like everyone hates Amarosa. She was on the apprentice, like a very early season of Donald Trump's old show. I didn't come here to make friends. I said that from day one. And if you all stop being so freaking sensitive, you know what? I don't know. It's too short to be a bitch. so freaking sensitive. You know what? I don't know. It's too short to be a bitch. She was so ruthless and then she kind of joined him when he started his political career and then

everyone hated her even more. Yeah. And then she bailed on him too. Yeah, and he hates her. And yeah. All right, that's a pretty good answer. I will say I was half expecting you to say me, or even us based on our Apple Podcast reviews, some of which are very rude. Yeah, I mean, I do think a lot of people can unite over disliking us. Don't forget to leave us a review. Okay, well, anyway, I want to talk to you about one super rich, cartoonishly evil entrepreneur who is so notoriously and unilaterally loathed that I'm pretty sure

he's actually the great equalizer across the globe. Yeah, that is a very powerful position to be in when everyone hates you. Everyone loves a supervillain until they don't. It's a clear and unusually warm morning in New York City on December 17, 2015. It's early, like 6.30 a.m. and Martin Scrolly is likely fast asleep in his Marie Hill apartment. For non-New Yorkers, Marie Hill is a Manhattan neighborhood full of finance, bros, and PR girls.

I personally cannot afford to live there, not on some podcaster's salary. Martin is 32 years old with sharp facial features and darks would be hair. And I imagine that he's jolted awake when he hears a loud banging at the front door. He's groggy and disoriented. He throws on a grey hoodie and opens the door to a group of FBI agents with handcuffs. Martin is under arrest, and he's charged with securities fraud. The fed say he misled investors, lied to brokers, and misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars from hedge funds.

Martin is thrown into the back of a squad car and taken to the Jacob K. Javits federal building in Lower Manhattan. The building is a 41- story glass and concrete monolith. And instead of sneaking him through the back, the FBI decides to march Martin through a crowd of reporters and photographers who are waiting on front. It's a complete media frenzy. I actually have a picture of it. Sarah, can you describe it?

Oh yeah, I can describe it without even looking at it. I know this photo very well. It's Martin Screly. He, you know, is totally stone-faced. Yeah. She's wearing the gray hoodie we all know and kind of love. I mean, it's a very evocative photo because he looks so normal. Like, you wouldn't look at this guy and think, oh, he's done all these things.

No, total normie. I feel like he looks like a poorly behaved teen being trotted out for like a doctor-filled segment where he gets sent to the ranch, you know? Yeah. Well, facing the cameras and the flashing lights, Martin's facial expression is completely blank. A lifetime of putting up walls and hiding his emotions

has prepared him very well for this moment. But now he's finally facing consequences and he could serve up to 20 years in prison. Martin Screly is a ragged to riches, and then back to ragged story. Adopting American capitalism as his religion, he traded morality for money, and in the end, he became public enemy number one. From Wondery, I'm Sachi Cole, and I'm Sarah Haggi, and this is Scamful Inswers. Sarah, I have, frankly, been completely obsessed with the story. It's a little bit about financial fraud, a little bit about how love can truly blind us.

And it hits on a little hobby horse of mine about how incredibly fucked up the American healthcare system is. There's something for us all. This is, there's something about Martin, part one. Gotcha. Many involved in crypto saw Sandbankman Freed as a breath of fresh air from the usual Wall Street buffs, but in just one month, his crypto exchange would collapse. From Bloomberg and Wondery comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docuseries about the wild rise and fall of FTX and its founder Sandbankman Freed.

Listen to Spellcaster on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. I love my kid, but is a new comedy parenting podcast from Wendry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Each week, the host will share a parenting story that'll have you laughing and thinking, yes, I have absolutely been there. Listen to, I love my kid, but on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Before he becomes a symbol for American capitalism, Martin Screly is just a shy, awkward kid struggling to fit in.

He grows up in a very working-class family in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York, Coney Island. He's one of four kids and a close-knit Albanian Croatian family. The neighborhood is dense with Eastern European immigrants like his parents. They both work odd jobs, mostly as janitors. For a while, his dad works as a doorman. Martin later says that he grows up with a lot of financial and medical anxieties, and that his family has a history of mental health issues. He's skeletally thin, and he skipped the first grade, so he's younger than his classmates.

Yofrin shows up to school without enough money for lunch, never mind cool sneakers and nice clothes. He seems like a lonely outcast, desperate to be liked, and it doesn't help that his hobbies are pretty dorky. He's into chess, video games, and computer programming. Martin has zero social status, so he seems to fixate on how to gain power by getting rich as hell. When he's just 13 years old, he reportedly asks his parents for the book Alchemy of Finance for Christmas. Around this time, his father says he gives him $2,000 to play the stock market in his name. Here's what he later tells a vice reporter.

I got interested in stocks as a kid and my friends made fun of me all the time for that and I told them that someday it would matter. Okay, well, by someday it would matter you mean for your entire existence forever. For ever, like for hundreds of years. But also, I do think that there's

something about guys like this. They always have a story where they're like, when I was a kid, no one liked me, but I was studying the blade. You know what I mean? I feel like a lot of the stories we do around men are just like Joker origin stories, because they all kind of feel the same way. It's like somebody didn't like you. I was special since I was a kid because people didn't like me and I had some really lame interest. And that's why I'm a genius. Well, Martin Veraciously reads newspapers, absorbing everything he can about trading and

Wall Street. And by the time he's in high school in the mid-90s, he's already pretty good at playing the stock market. One day, he's hanging at his crush's house in her bedroom when her dad knocks on the door and asks to speak with Martin in the other room. So Martin is preparing himself for the whole, if you touch my daughter, I'll kill you, talk.

But the dad looks at him with this serious expression on his face. And he asks Martin for investment advice. Oh, God, what a loser dad. That would be a boner killer for me, I think. Also, I thought no one liked you, Martin. Suddenly you're in a girls' room. Yeah, I didn't go into a boys' room until my 20s.

Well, Martin is consumed by this obsession with getting rich to prove himself. And it seems like he thinks he's always the smartest person in the room, even in a room full of adults. So he starts questioning authority, especially the kind of authority that stands between him and serious money. When he finally gets unleashed on Wall Street a few years later, the rules won't apply. As a 17-year-old freshman at Baruch College, Martin scores an internship at a Wall Street hedge fund.

It's called Kramer Berkowitz, and Jim Kramer, the host of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Kramer, is a partner there. I picture Martin standing outside their offices wearing a starched button-down shirt and door-he-slacks. His eyes are all big as he stares up at a skyscraper. It's probably a huge deal for a working class kid like him. It's the first day of the rest of his life.

At first, Martin's job is mostly menial tasks. File this, staple that. But Martin's dreams are too big for the admin work he's been given. So he learns all he can about the stock market, and he spends hours in chat rooms after work, speculating about stocks. And it turns out Sarah, he's pretty good at it. One day, he suggests that his employer short a biotech stock. Basically, that means taking a huge bet that the price of the stock would plummet.

So Kramer Birkwitz takes a chance on Martin's hunch and it pays off big time. The share price of the stock takes a nose dive and the firm makes a huge profit. I mean, it is very remarkable that Martin is so young and able to do this. Yeah. It's such a good play, in fact, that the Securities and Exchange Commission calls Kramer Berkowitz to make sure that they didn't have any insider knowledge. But they don't find anything, just a gangly teenager with good instincts. Martin knows that a lot of biotic firms are out there raising tons of money.

Promising investors that their drug is going to cure diseases and also make them very rich. But most don't even get their drugs approved by the FDA. And without approval, the value of their shares plummet. It's a lot of bluffing and Martin knows how to sniff it out. So he becomes a golden boy at the firm. According to Vanity Fair, he becomes Kramer Birkowitz's mole, spying on hedge funds and then sharing the information with the team. After graduating from Baruch College at just 20 years old,

Martin is hired by Kramer Birkowitz as an analyst, but he doesn't stay put for long. He takes jobs at a few other firms over the next few years, using his reputation for being a finance prodigy to climb the ladder on Wall Street. When he decides to start his own firm, Alia Capital Management in 2006, he easily convinces multiple investors

to raise roughly $5 million to help him get it off the ground. But Martin's boldness is a double-edged sword. He loves making big bets, but sometimes he's wrong and being wrong on Wall Street is very expensive. A year after founding Alia Capital Management, Martin makes a big gamble. He bets more than $2 million at the market will drop. And when it doesn't, he doesn't have the money

to pay back the investment bank, Lehman Brothers. So Lehman Brothers takes Martin to court and wins a $2.3 million judgment against him. But Martin has impeccable timing as ever, because something big happens on Wall Street in 2008. Sarah, do you have any guesses? You know, I watched a bit of this movie once while on my phone called The Big Short.

Does it have anything to do with that? I think so. I also watched that movie. I barely understood it. So I was like, money bad. Money bad, me stupid. That's what I took from that movie. But yes, you're right.

In 2008, the stock market collapses and the world is thrown into a financial crisis. It's the millennial original sin, basically. And also, Lehman Brothers completely folds. They file for bankruptcy, and guess who doesn't have to pay them back anymore? Our boy, Marty. Our boy, Marty. So Martin might be off the hook, but his new company has been destroyed.

So he moves back home to Sheep's Head Bay. It's probably a little depressing to go from being a swanky Wall Street player to sleeping in your childhood bedroom, but Martin refuses to stay down. And this time, he's determined to do whatever it takes to succeed, legal, or otherwise. After a while, Martin remembers the thing that made him a superstar when he was still just

an intern, shorting biotech stocks. So he decides to start a new hedge fund that focuses on doing just that. He calls it MSMB Capital, and its tactics are savage. He goes online and spreads rumors that certain stocks will go down, influencing people to sell them. And it works. Technically, this kind of market manipulation is illegal, but it's really hard to prove.

So it seems like there are a lot of things that are illegal, wink, wink, you know? Yes. Or it's like, I don't know, is it legal? Wink. Yeah, there's a lot of sort of internal winking happening in this industry that you and I will never understand. But Martin is back, baby.

He's out of his parents' house with a new company. From the outside, things seem to be going great. Martin calls and emails current investors and prospective investors to tell them that MSMB is killing it. But he's hiding a big secret from them. He owes millions to the investors for his first failed company, and he doesn't have it. The truth is MSMB is barely surviving. How do you function knowing you owe millions of dollars? I don't know. I get nervous when I get a Venmo request that I don't immediately fulfill.

I don't know, I get nervous when I get a Venmo request that I don't immediately fulfill. But Martin still manages to court investors. One of them is 21-year-old Sarah Hassan. She's got long brown hair and dimples. And her dad is an uber wealthy pharmaceuticals executive. And she appears to be following in his footsteps. She just graduated with an MBA in finance and pharmaceutical management.

And after she hears that Martin is a rising star in the hedge fund world, she decides she needs to meet him. Martin and Sarah meet at a restaurant in Manhattan in January 2011. And Martin reportedly tells Sarah that MSNB is managing between 40 and 50 million dollars, which is a lie. Really, they have less than50 million, which is a lie. Really, they have less than $700, which is mostly a result of Martin's reckless trading. How the hell is this guy walking around?

Saying he's managing between $40 to $50 million, when you have less than $700, that's not even rent for a room these days. It's nothing. It's not even rent for a room these days. It's nothing. It's not even rent for one of four bedrooms you would have to share in like four green. I am shaken by this lie. Ah, I know.

Martin. I know. Martin. Well, despite all of this lying, the dinner goes well. And Sarah decides to invest $300,000 into MSMB capital. Martin starts sending Sarah email updates boasting about the company's success. But within a month, the emails have stopped.

Martin doesn't have much good news to report anyway. It turns out he shorted another farmer stock and reportedly lost some $7 million. That is insane. He had $700. Yeah. Now he's losing $7 million. That is insane. He had $700. Yeah. Now he's losing $7 million. This story does make me start to feel that money is not real.

What's real? What is real on this earth? It's making me feel crazy. Yeah, I don't know. But in the fall of 2012, Sarah gets an email from Martin, telling her that he's closing his firm. All the money is gone. And I can only imagine that Sarah is pissed.

The loss makes her look really bad, but Martin tells her not to worry. He's starting a new pharma company called Retrofin, focused on creating medicine for rare diseases. And she can take her payout in either cash or shares of the company. Sarah chooses cash, obviously, but receives shares of a shell company instead. After a six-month legal dispute, Martin finally agrees to wire her $300,000. The money she initially invested in the company. Plus she gets to keep the stocks.

By this point, Retrofin has taken off, and Martin's recently been featured in a Forbes 30 under 30 finance list. It's a glowing profile with the headline, Hege Fund, GAD Fly Trans Biotech Entrepreneur. It paints him as a wonderkin who's dedicated to funding new medicines to help people with rare diseases. Sarah, take a look. Yeah, I mean, this is a real Forbes article.

It's not like one of those paid partnership things that you see at the top. Yeah, no, it's real. And, you know, just skimming through it, it's really framing this as a guy who wants to just do right by the world. There's a quote saying, I'd like to focus on my life on creating new medicines for people

who are suffering from rare diseases. And I guess if you just read something like that, you think like, oh yeah, this guy's using finance for good. Yeah. Well, at this point, Martin must feel amazing with all of this attention. Retrofin has raised millions and his investors or heavy hitters, like the CEO of the maker of Botox.

And before long, Martin will make a name for himself even outside of Wall Street and Big Pharma, as the most hated man in America. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, In 2014, three years after Martin starts Retrofin, he buys the rights to a drug called Theola,

which helps prevent a rare form of kidney stone. And he immediately jacks the price up exponentially, from a dollar 50 a pill to $30 a pill. Oh my God. Yeah, this is when we get into super-villain territory. There aren't a ton of people who need theola, but those who do have to take several pills a day. So the price increase results in big profits for Martin and big losses for everyone who actually needs this drug.

Retrofinstock's Sky Rockets. And then, on May 29, 2014, Scrappy Tweets two things. Sarah, could you read this tweet first? He says, everyone having a nice day? Isn't there just something bone-chilling about someone who writes tweets like this? Like, it's just so pleasant, but isn't it spooky? And then, just two minutes later, Martin fires off another tweet,

and this one says, quote, this is one of the best days of my life. Sarah, can you guess why Martin might be tweeting all of this? Does it have anything to do with him making a ton of money? Well, Retrofen closes a deal that same day, buying a new drug from a private Texas-based company. And Martin is using his Twitter account to hint that Retrofen is doing really well, which basically amounts to manipulating the stock market by trying to encourage people

to buy shares of his company. Martin takes a lot of heat for this. And the members of Retrofen's board are furious. They tell him to stop tweeting and to get his act together. Well, yeah, I feel like he's doing a big faux pas in this kind of finance world, that's full of old people who don't use the internet, which is, yes, shot up. Other people can't know what we're really like. Well, the other thing is that you can't tame Martin Screli. The day after he sends those tweets, he pulls another stunt. Now that the price of retrofen is sword, he sells nearly $4.5 million worth of his own shares of it. Martin offloading all of those shares makes him a ton of money,

but it also makes his investors think something bad is going down at the company, and everyone sells, tanking the stock. So he really just doesn't care at all if he burns his own company down as long as he makes money? Yeah. and at this point, Martin's obsession shifts from making money to keeping it, even if it means breaking rules, further trashing his reputation and alienating everyone around him, including the people at his own company. In September 2014, the chairman of the Trofen's Board calls Martin for a meeting on the 22nd floor of his office in Midtown East.

Looking out at the city from this phallic glass tower, Martin must feel like the master of the universe. But the chairman tries to bring him back to Earth. He reportedly tells Martin that the board has had it with him. They want him out as CEO. He can stay on as a senior advisor, but he can't be the face of the company anymore. About a year and a half later, he reflects on this time in an interview with a podcast called Schmucks.

My board fired me over Twitter. There's things that as a CEO, you probably shouldn't do on Twitter, and that's fine, but my addiction to social media was so strong. I mean, that's probably one of the more honest things he said, I guess, because it's 100% true. Well, at the time, Martin is too deep in his Twitter addiction to even understand what a blow this really is. Instead, he basically laughs in the chairman of the board's face.

He refuses to accept the demotion, and he brags that he doesn't even need Retrofin. In fact, that same weekend, he decides to start a new company, Turing. What's up with these guys invoking old scientists' names for their companies? It doesn't make you seem like you have more experience. Yeah, I mean, they're just trying to recapture lightning in a bottle. It's aspirational. Yeah, it is. It'd be like if I'm like, I'm starting a company called Rihanna.

Oh, God. Isn't that be fun? Well, being kicked out of retrophin seems to strip Martin of any accountability. Now, he feels free to flaunt his money and status, but his next big attempt to impress people completely backfires. About six months later, on a cold spring night in March 2015, Martin shows up to the Museum of Modern Arts PS1 Location in Queens. There's a huge stage with a massive screen

and towering speakers on either side. The stage has just three chairs. One for 45-year-old Wu-Tang Clan rapper Rizza, his co-producer Sylva Chains, and a music critic from The New Yorker. They're here to host a private listening party for a very unique album, called Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,

which features all surviving members of the Wu Tang Clan. The album is wild. It features a guest appearance from share and comes in a hand-carved box with 174 pages of liner notes. And it's been stored in a vault in a hotel in Morocco, watched over by security guards since Riza and Silva Chains finished it. Oh, I know this album. It is very infamous.

Yeah. And has been the subject for a lot of controversy. Yes. Well, Riza is auctioning off the only existing copy of the album slash art piece to the highest bidder. Tonight, he's playing just 12 minutes of this precious music to a tray exclusive crowd of roughly three dozen fans, potential buyers, and members of the press. Soon after the listening party, Rizza gets a call. The auction house he's working with has found a buyer. Here's what he later recalls in an interview with Bloomberg. Rizza, they said we have another guy who just came on board. He's interested. He's young.

He's a Wu-Tang fan, he loves hip-hop. Would you like to meet him? And that's how Risa finds himself sitting across from Martin Scroely. They connect on their humble backgrounds and their love of hip-hop, and by the end of their meeting, Risa feels comfortable selling the album to him. Martin doesn't tell anyone that he's the secret buyer

of Shaolin, making him the only person on earth who can listen to the album. But when his little secret eventually gets out, it'll come at the worst possible time, bringing Martin to unimaginable new lows. Martin Scroely is feeling like a baller and turns high-rise office in Murray Hill. After the rollercoaster of working on Wall Street, dealing with all the risks and losses, Martin shifts his focus to more of a sure thing. You notice his big pharma buying orphan drugs.

Drugs that treat diseases so rare that they often have no competition and jacking up the price. So in August of 2015, Martin buys an orphan drug called Dera Prim, which is used to treat toxoplasmosis. It's an infection that mostly affects people with HIV and AIDS and pregnant people,

and the drug to treat it can be life-saving. At the time that he buys it, there's no generic form of it. So Martin immediately raises the price of Dera Prim by more than 5,000%. And overnight, a single pill goes from $13.50 to $750. This was another big moment where if you hadn't heard

about him by now, this is when you're going to hear about him. And I just remember all the headlines of like, this scumbag, like, he took this rare drug. Yeah. It was so nakedly monstrous. Everyone was like, there has to be something else here. Like, this can't just be what he did. And I just remember everyone going so crazy.

Yeah, it's kind of a fun story where like the person being terrible is that's it. There's no like secret reason for any of it. And within 24 hours, Martin goes from being just another finance pro to being a super villain in the eyes of the public. He actually earns a pretty lasting nickname, the most hated man in America. The thing is, Martin and Turing are not the only ones pulling this kind of stunt. Drugmakers raise the price of life-saving drugs all the time. The difference is, Martin doesn't shy away from the spotlight. Here's what he says about it on CBS this morning. Why was it necessary to raise the price of

deroprim so drastically? Well, it depends on how you define so drastically because the drug was unprofitable at the former price, and at this price, it's a reasonable profit, not excessive at all. I mean, you have to sort of accept his terms that healthcare is about a profit to even wrap your head around the logic. Well, here's a thing like, okay, he did something terrible. There's no question. But effectively, this is how healthcare works.

It is about turning a profit in most cases, especially in the US. And there's a reason why people ration insulin. And it's not because there's one villain who's making insulin so expensive that people die from something they shouldn't be dying from. No, there's several villains. It's because that's how it works. Yeah.

You know, like, I guess in a way, when I think about it, like, this could have been this moment of reckoning almost of people being like, wait, someone can just do this. These companies can just do this and they do it all the time. And it just happens to be an extremely online troll who's doing it this time. Yeah. But instead, I feel like it kind of became all about Martin Screly when it could have been about much more. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, in the interview with CBS, Martin also says that the price hike won't actually impact patients. He says the additional cost will only impact insurance companies and hospitals. But that has created its own set of problems that impacts patients. The chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai told Vanity Fair that when her hospital tried to buy more Dera Prim, they were told that their credit limit just wasn't high enough. And an Emory University professor of medicine told NPR that one of her patients with toxoplasmosis

has been ready to leave the hospital for months, but no rehab facility will take her because they can't afford the dareprem that she needs. All the while, Martin is riling up his haters even more by bragging about how rich he is on Twitter. He tweets out a photo of a bottle of 1979 wine and claims that it costs $9,000. And more than once, he tweets photos of the views from a helicopter flying high over New York City.

Sarah, take a look. This is so deeply embarrassing for Martin. There's no signifier of not belonging more than posting photos like this. No person whose life is actually like this would ever post this on Twitter, because it's tacky. Yeah. He tweets like a middle-aged housewife

like visiting New York for the first time. It's like he won a contest. Ha-ha-ha. Well, Martin quickly becomes the poster boy for pharmaceutical greed. And it's not like he's quietly raking in the dough. He's flaunting his wealth in the most obnoxious way possible. And the more he runs his mouth on Twitter,

the more his enemies want to take him down, including some of the most powerful people in the country. And I feel like a... Like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, Let's get it. Let's get it. Martin doesn't take his new spot as America's most wanted capitalist lightly. On Twitter and Reddit, he calls the price hike a great thing for society. He quotes M&M and calls at least one reporter a moron before briefly making his Twitter private. Oh, and all of this is happening during the lead up to a presidential election. So Martin becomes a talking point on the campaign trail. That's price gouging, pure and simple.

It looks like a spoiled brat to me. In an email to supporters, Sanders called Screly a prescription drug price gouger. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump all agreed. Martin, Screly, sucks. It is cool that everyone can get along to call him a little bitch, you know? It's really encouraging. But then something else happens, like, keeps Martin at the center of the internet storm. Bloomberg Business revealed on Wednesday that the buyer was pharmaceutical CEO Martin Screly.

Wu Tang Clan ain't nothing to f**k with. And, you know, here comes Martin Screly, and what does he do? He f**ked with. Wu Tang Clan ain't nothing to f*** with. And, you know, here comes Martin Screli and what does he do? He f*** with the Wu Tang Clan. Neither Wu Tang nor Martin have ever revealed how much he paid for the record. But a friend of Martin's tells Bloomberg it was around two million dollars. In a statement to

that publication, Rizza says, the sale of once upon a time in Shaolin was agreed upon in May. Well before Martin Screli's business practices came to light. We decided to give a significant portion of the proceeds to charity. About a month later, Riz's bandmate, Ghostface Killer, takes things a step further.

When asked by TMZ how he felt about the guy who bought Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, Ghostface says, Yeah, that's a sh**, hey. Yeah, yeah, sh**, hey, bro, you know what I mean? You don't take some age, or age pill that you have, but I guess for $7, it didn't make it like $800. Yeah, that's what you mean. You don't do that like that.

Ghost calls on Martin to release the album to the public. And in response, Martin makes a video. The video, Sarah, it is truly wild. There's three randos wearing skeleton outfits and hoods standing around him like they're his posse. He sips his wine and calls ghost face killer an old man. He asks for a formal written apology, and then he like kind of threatens him. Why is it?

Why are your goons not as hard as mine? Ghost stop pretending, stop acting, stop lying. Be real as your video wants set. And don't ever f**king mention my name again. I have more, there'll be more, more of a price to pay than just this video. Just what do you think, Martin can can't do something more humiliating. He's so embarrassing.

He takes it to another level. This video, he's also wearing like slightly unbuttoned dress shirt with, you know, a blazer on top. And it's like, what cartoon did you watch where you thought this was cool? Yeah. Some people are just born embarrassing, Sarah. Like, you could just, just stop. Well, obviously Ghostface can't just sit back and take it.

So, of course, he makes a video in response. Hey, yo, man, do hilarious, man. I don't know. You must be on really the stuff, man. You know what I mean? Take this out, man. It's like, yo, you will figure it super villain, man. And then Ghost brings out his goons,

meaning his sister and his mom. Love Martin, if you as my son, I would be your ass. I give you ass whipping because what you doing is so, so, so, fell. He turned the disgrace my brother, Ghost Face Killer. There is nothing that scares me more than being yelled at by somebody else's mom or sister, truly. Yeah, also, it's kind of like, be better, ghost. Like, I don't know, I kind of like it. You don't need to involve yourself in this any further.

Like, he's not a worthy opponent. Yeah, I guess so, but I'm glad he did it for the content. Well, Martin's galactic level of cringe definitely gets him attention. But unfortunately for him, his internet haters are not the only one scrutinizing everything he says and does. The FBI is on to his case too, and they are about to pounce. A few months later, in December 2015, a reporter named Christie Smythe gets a scoop.

Farma's bad boy has been arrested by the FBI in his Murray Hill apartment. She's been tracking Martin for a year and she's been waiting for this moment and her patience pays off. She breaks the story for Bloomberg. The headline of Christie's article is matter of fact. Screly, drug price gouger, denies fraud and posts bail.

Christie's in her early 30s with pale skin and honey blonde hair. She covers the federal court in Brooklyn and nearly every day she writes about different people or companies suing each other. Her career is going well, but she's waiting for that big breakout story. And she probably thinks that Martin Screly might just be the story she's waiting for. Okay, Satchy, you know what? I'm going to have to say, even if our listeners don't know where this is going, I know where this is going. And I'm going to tell you right now, I don't like it, I don't like it one bit. I know. Well, a handful of months after Christie's article comes out, she heads to Congress to watch Martin testify about skyrocketing drug prices.

He wears a black blazer and a striped button down and he's got a perma smirk plastered on his face. Martin is not here to make friends. On the stand, Christie takes notes as Martin refuses to answer a single question, invoking the fifth amendment every time. A frustrated Congressman Trey Gowdy tries to get Martin to spill the tea.

You are welcome to answer questions and not all of your answers are going to subject you to incriminations. Do you understand that, don't you? I intend to follow the advice from my council, not yours. Congressman Elijah Cummings, ranking member of the subcommittee, tries to get through to Martin and well, he's not exactly successful. I want to ask you to, no, I want to plead with you, to use any remaining influence you have over your former company to press them

to lower the price of these drugs. You can look away if you like, but I wish you could see the faces of people who cannot get the drugs that they need. After the hearing, Martin tweets out, hard to accept that these invasiles represent the people in our government. While most people would conclude that, yeah, Martin sucks,

it does seem like Christie sees something else. A slight nerdy man covering his insecurity with Robato. Yeah, get in line. That's all men. Like, oh no, he's so special. As he's a nerd who's insecure. Oh my god, stop the presses. Yeah. Well, Christy decides to email Martin to get his side of the story.

But he's hard to nail down. She wonders who is the person behind the persona. This question will soon become an obsession, leading her down a dangerous path of no return. A few months after the trial, Christy Smith sits across her Martin at a bar near her apartment. He probably agrees to chat with her because, well, he's been charged with securities fraud and lets face it. He needs an ally in the media. According to Christie, Martin says that he wants someone to write the truth about him.

That sure, he's a jerk, but he's innocent. But he hasn't agreed to an on-the-record interview just yet. This is just a warm-up. Over wine and snacks, Martin shares about his childhood. How he skipped the first grade because he was so smart, only to feel lonely and out of step with his peers. Christy later says that as a kid, Martin got anxiety attacks that were so bad,

his family took him to the hospital because he thought he was dying. Christy also says that she grew up with anxiety and feelings of not belonging. And she leaves the interview confused by her own feelings. Has Martin Screly charmed her? This is a plague that has been cast upon women all over the world, where talking to a man and finding anything he says remotely relatable

translates into a deeper connection. And it's very unfortunate for Christy that this man happens to be Martin Screly. Yeah, I mean Sarah, I don't want to spoil too much because there's another episode about this next week and it's even juicier. But what I will say is that the meeting goes well and Martin agrees to meet Christy again, this time at the Turing office. He continues to dangle the possibility of giving her a real interview, but Christy's frustrated. She can't write about anything he says if this is all off the record. After the meeting, they keep in touch via phone and email, and Martin keeps playing cat and mouse. Christy is hooked. It seems like Martin Scraley represents so much to her. The scoop of a lifetime, a story she can really own,

maybe she can even turn it into a book, which would probably open a lot of other doors for her. Unfortunately, what she thinks is her meal ticket is actually her downfall. Christy is about to get pulled in by Martin's powerful personality and she'll lose her journalistic credibility and so, so much more. Hey, Prime members! You can listen to ScanFluencers,

Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen Add Free with Wondery Plus and Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wendry.com slash survey. This is, there's something about Martin Part One. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Haggi. We use many sources in our research.

A few that were particularly helpful were Bethany McLean's article for Vanity Fair. Everything you know about Martin Screly is wrong. Or is it? Ali Conti's article for Vice, Wine, Wu Tang, and Pharmaceuticals inside Martin Screly's world, and Paul Barrett's article for Bloomberg once a notorious short-seller, Martin Screly Now Seas of Future in Biotech. Rose Cerno wrote this episode,

additional writing by us, Sachi Cole and Sarah Haggi. Our senior producer is Gen Swan. Our producer is John Reed. Our associate producers are Charlotte Miller and Lexi Peary. Our story editors are Sarah Annie and Alison Windtrop. And our senior story editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Sound design is by James Morgan,

fact checking by Sona Maynard. Additional audio assistance provided by Adrian Tapia. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freezonsync. Our executive producers are Janine Cornelo, Stephanie Gens, and Marshall Lui for Wondry. you