Uncover - S21 E3: The Scorpion | "The No Good, Terribly Kind, Wonderful Lives and Tragic Deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman"

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

To get ahead in the generic drug industry you need to be focused, hard-nosed and fearless. Especially because half the battle is taking on one of the richest, most powerful industries in the world — Big Pharma. Barry Sherman was the perfect generic drug lord — more litigator than innovator — but did his ability to win in court, and slough off the losses, end up getting him killed?For transcripts of this series, please visit here.Katherine Eban’s Bottle of LiesJeffery Robinson’s Prescription GamesNancy Olivieri’s How John le Carré Changed my LifeJohn le Carré The Constant GardenerNancy and Barry on 60 Minutes

Hi, I'm Caitlin Prest, and I am here in your ear to tell you about a very incredible show called Asking For It. Asking For It is a darkly comedic series that follows a queer femme singer whose herstory of violence finds her no matter how many times she runs away. It has an original soundtrack, and it'll make you laugh laugh, cry and feel a little bit less alone. Asking for it. Subscribe now. Thank you. CBC Podcast Production. We're setting up in a hotel room just outside London, England. The producer Kathleen is going to be down the line in Canada. Oh, OK.

So we're here supporting it. Yeah, no worries. We'll talk about your biography, and then they'll talk to you on those headphones. Hopefully all of it will be done in about 90 minutes. Getting this interview wasn't easy. Paul Weibrow is not the kind of guy who trusts quickly. He took some convincing.

I'm a former detective with the City of London Police. And latterly, my service was at Scotland Yard in their specialist operation department, SO10, which was for undercover police officers. What made you good at being an undercover police officer? Well, I suppose really being honest, before I joined the police force, I was a car salesman, and I was very used to talking the money out of people's pockets, so to speak, the hard-earned cash out of people's pockets. I transferred that skill. Paul carried a badge for nearly 20 years,

and for most of those years, he investigated serious fraud cases. I retired in 95 because I had a bad injury. I got hit by a car and had to have a false ankle and a shoulder. And I can't really bend my left foot. Anyway, I left the police in 95 and went to work for a company in the city of London as a private investigator. And that was where I first started to investigate patent infringement for pharmaceuticals. Patent infringement for pharmaceuticals. I know, it doesn't sound quite as sexy as the stuff you would have done

as an undercover cop, but big pharma is a pretty crazy world. And basically, Paul became a spy for them. It was at this point in his professional life that Paul's world intersected with Barry Sherman's. Barry Sherman was a powerhouse in pharmaceuticals. Apotex was earning $700 million a year in sales. Barry had not only become well-known for his business savvy, but also for the aggressive nature in which he went after patents held by big pharmaceutical companies like Bayer. During the second half of 95 and the first part of 96, we were called over to Bayer by Steve Smith. Steve Smith was head of investigations at Bayer, one of the largest pharmaceutical

companies in the world, with its headquarters in Leverkusen, Germany. Smith was very, very keen to get intelligence on Barry Sherman, which was a bit strange because we normally focused on the company, you know? But Smith said that Barry Sherman, they'd had litigation against him in the past for producing a, and he knew they were producing a drug called runitidine, which was an anti-ulcer drug. Thanks to COVID vaccines,

we all know a lot about brand name drugs. Pfizer, Moderna, they're household names now. Basically, what happens in the pharma world is that companies like Bayer develop new drugs. And for a period, that company is the only one allowed to make it. The drug is protected by a patent. Companies like Apotex don't develop new drugs.

They make generic versions based on the original formulas when those patents run out. For example, one of Apotex's bestsellers is a generic version of the cholesterol drug Lipitor. I mean, particularly Bayer in Germany, they protected their patents with vigor, really, because if somebody started making their product on the market, it would undermine their market share. And, you know, they spent millions of dollars developing and producing this drug. And then someone's making it down in Mexico or China for pennies and then putting it on the market.

The standard phrase was that counterfeit and copied pharmaceuticals was much more lucrative than heroin, cocaine and the rest of it. was much more lucrative than heroin, cocaine, and the rest of it. The race to develop a generic version and to push the limits on patent dates is a constant source of tension between big pharma and generics. And whether you see generic drugs as counterfeit and copied, or legitimate and necessary, depends on which side of the multi-billion dollar battle you sit on. According to Paul's boss at Bayer, Steve Smith,

Barry was on the wrong side. He was a major infringer, and they'd had brushes with him in the past, and that he needed to be stopped. Yeah, that was Smith's kind of mantra. He needed to be stopped. Barry didn't just piss off Bayer because he was competitive. At any given time, Apotex could be involved in hundreds of legal battles, mainly over patents.

But it seemed to Paul that Barry's aggressive nature had gotten under his boss's skin. In addition to the usual intelligence gathering operation, Smith wanted to know the movements of Barry Sherman, where he lived and everything. It was very unusual to focus on an individual. Once you got instructions that a company was infringing, you would then focus on the company and their shipping and their general movements of the factory. And you'd sit there or you'd employ someone to sit there

and generally just try to gather in challenges. But to focus on an individual was very, very strange. I'm sorry, Paul. I have a cat who appears at every interview I do. His name is Wilbur and he loves the mic. Okay, back to Paul. So his job was to go after Barry. And the plan got elaborate.

He set up a fake charity based in the Middle East as a sting operation. The cover was that it was a new charity that had been formed, a children's charity. And I was seeking to provide some low-priced, good quality pharmaceutical products to supply to Africa. After a few faxes back and forth, this was the mid-90s remember, Paul managed to arrange a meeting. I was asked to go to the Apotex Toronto factory. During the meeting, someone came in. I recognized it as being Barry Sherman and the guy jumped up and introduced him as the boss. And Sherman didn't sit down, but he stayed there.

And he said, oh, you know, you're working for a charity. I'd like to do something for the kids in Africa, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he went. And when he went, the guy said to me, you know, Barry Sherman's a great man. He's very philanthropic. And he supports the Jewish community in Toronto. And he gives thousands of dollars to charity and blah, blah, blah. Which was a complete opposite to what, listening to Steve Smith, you'd think Barry Sherman was a, you know, a real crook. crooked. Paul was comfortable with all of this, with the fake charity and the attempt to get samples of medicine that Bayer believed Apotex was copying without permission. But then Paul

was asked to go further, to a place that didn't sit well with him. Smith wanted us to try and find somebody to put something in Sherman's trunk of his car. Smith also allegedly suggested planting drugs in Barry's car or setting him up in a sting operation with a minor. Allegations that were first reported in Fortune magazine in 1999. In the article, Smith was called Bayer's spymaster. He said he could arrange for someone in the Toronto police to stop him on his way home and search the car and find it in his trunk. And we dismissed that. We said, no, we don't have anything to do with that, you know. I mean, that was over the line.

Smith had been in business long enough to have seen a lot of aggressive moves. But somehow, Barry was able to push him so hard that Smith wanted to destroy the man, rather than just deal with the business. Smith was obsessive about Sherman. And Smith wasn't the only one who Barry pushed this hard. who Barry pushed this hard. Big Pharma has been brought up as one of the possible entities that wanted to see him dead.

What do you think about that? No, no, there's no way. In my mind, there's no way that anybody would have given those instructions. You don't kill, you know. Yeah, he was a pain in the side and, you know, it cost him thousands of dollars, but to kill him and kill his wife?

No, I don't think so. We did reach out to Bayer, but they wouldn't confirm that Steve Smith actually worked there. Nor would they comment on the jobs that Paul says he did on their behalf. We did try to find Steve Smith ourselves, but we weren't able to. In the Fortune magazine article, Smith says that if he made these comments, they were said as a joke over a pint of beer, that he wasn't serious about actually framing Sherman. Paul never finished the job on Barry, because after that meeting in Toronto, he was sent to Cyprus to spy on another generic drug company. And this time, he got caught.

Long story short, we went out to pick the documents up. We took possession of the documents, and the next day we were arrested, and they charged us with industrial espionage. And we ended up getting 18 months. Paul served eight of those 18 months in a Cyprus prison. Once released, he left the spy business for good. And he has no idea if anyone was hired to follow up with Apotex or finish the job. And that was it. Barry Sherman lived to fight another day, really. I'm Kathleen Goldtar.

And this is the no-good, terribly kind, wonderful lives and tragic deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman. Chapter three, The Scorpion. What did you think about when you first heard that they had been killed? What went through your mind? I guess my first thought was I wasn't surprised at all. Anybody who is deeply immersed in the global generic drug industry is trafficking in a dangerous world. is trafficking in a dangerous world. You know, a world of fraud, a world of threats, a world of subterfuge. Catherine Eban is an investigative journalist who specializes in public health and national security issues. I've written two books, both of which are about the

pharmaceutical industry. And Bottle of Lies, the inside story of the generic drug boom, is about fraud in the generic drug industry. Today, generic drugs are incredibly common. Pharmacists will often fill prescriptions with them, and I always assumed they were exactly the same as the name brand ones, but less expensive. A generic drug is a version of a brand name drug that is supposed to produce the same results in the body. The FDA recognizes that it's not going to be identical, but it's going to be a close copy of a brand name drug. The requirement is that it has to reach roughly the same level of drug in the blood as the brand name. It has to use the same molecule and the same route of administration. Pill has to be a pill. An injection has to be an injection.

has to be a pill. An injection has to be an injection. But there are also permitted differences even in the best case scenario. So for example, a generic can use different excipients, which are additional ingredients. It has to meet a range of the concentration of drug in the blood. of the concentration of drug in the blood, it can be released at a different rate, which can have quite significant consequences for patients. So, you know, a generic is a close enough copy, ideally. And Barry Sherman made his billions on these close enough copy drugs, manufacturing and selling them around the world.

When generic drugs are produced properly, are they safe? Yes, safe and effective, you know, and essential. So a good generic can enable, you know, the health of millions. I mean, that is how we essentially got HIV under some kind of control. In 2020, the global generic drug market was valued at nearly 400 billion U.S. dollars. Of course, that pales in comparison with big pharma. The global pharmaceutical industry was worth more than a trillion dollars. And that's why generic drug companies often describe themselves as the David to Big Pharma's Goliath. Certainly, that's how Barry described himself over the years, as an underdog, out to do good. If we're thieves, we are Robin Hoods. Even in business, I try to operate on certain principles. I like to say that

when you're in business, there are two ways of certain principles. I like to say that when you're in business, there are two ways of making money. One is to cheat other people. And the other is to build value. And my principle has always been to do what I can to build value and deal honorably and ethically with everybody. You know, I've interviewed many obscenely wealthy generic drug executives, many of whom have committed fraud. Who say that? They're the underdog. You know,

they're on the side of the people. So that is a common refrain. But Catherine has a hard time with the hero narratives, when the reality is that the generic drug world is rife with billionaires, dirty tricks, and outright fraud. Sometimes it's generic companies fighting against one another, and in other instances, it is generic companies colluding with one another. colluding with one another. So for example, there is this vast case that has been brought against a number of generic drug manufacturers for price fixing. And Apotex, I think, has been named in that. Hold on one second. Let me just double check that. I just want to see. Hold on. I just want to see. Hold on. Yeah. OK. So, you know, Apotex has been identified as participating in this vast price fixing scheme.

In another instance, after inspecting one of Apotex's plants in India in 2017, the FDA found evidence that the company was using fraudulent data. And as a result, the FDA imposed a warning letter and an import alert against the company, meaning that they were restricting Apotex's drugs from entering the U.S. market. That is a very heavy penalty for a company. I mean, it's a vast financial loss for the company, and it really got ensnarled in the FDA's sort of compliance and oversight mechanisms. So, you know, to this day, the company is still digging out from those sorts of problems. I have often said about my beat that I cover organized crime. I'm writing about organized crime. You know, it just happens to be organized by pharmaceutical executives, but organized crime nonetheless. Do you ever face threats? Sure. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Tell me a little bit about that. Um, you know, I've been followed. I've been threatened. I was tailed. I was lied to. The Chinese government followed me and hacked my phone. I've had routinely the garbage stolen in front of my house. Yeah. Oh, and faced sort of epic and endless threat of lawsuits, certainly in the run-up to Bottle of Lies publication. But I was never sued. So, you know, the truth is still a defense.

Have there been other murders of generic drug lords? Not that I'm aware of, but I know that there are, you know, it is an environment of significant threat. So we've talked to some people who think that it was some hit from big pharma or something or another generic. What do you think about that? Do you think that there actually could be a hit made on Barry's life because of the work he did? I absolutely think there could be a hit on his life because of the work he did. Do I think it was big pharma? I have an immediate reaction to that. No. Frankly, from everything I could see, I think a hit would be much more likely to come from a generic competitor. There's plenty of ruthless competition within the generic drug industry.

To be successful in the generic drug industry, you have to be litigious. You have to be not afraid of conflict because it's all conflict. It's war. The brand companies will surround their products with patents. Not just a patent. Hey, one patent for one drug. No, dozens of patents on a single drug. You patent the molecule.

You patent the method of manufacturing. You patent the use of the excipients. You patent the time release formula. You know, you protect that drug in every possible way. Now, if you're a generic drug company and you want a piece of that, you are going to be in a battle in court. And if that is not your thing, you're in the wrong industry. So I do think that, you know, from all reports, his litigious nature, his embrace of conflict made him a perfect generic drug executive. And he did embrace it.

Barry's legal maneuvers, his challenges to patent holders and to government regulators cost everyone a lot of money, including Apotex. regulators cost everyone a lot of money, including Apotex. That's why Apotex is by far the largest investor in research and litigation in Canada. In this Apotex promotional video, Barry justifies his litigiousness. Well, it saw Rubinak playing Barry, using Barry's words. Apotex wouldn't give us permission to use the actual tape. In total, those patent challenges delivered more than $1.3 billion in new generic revenue to the market. No one comes even close to matching those numbers. And we're going to keep on leading the way. What's clear to me is that this is an industry where nice guys finish last and the people who really want and attempt to do the right thing face great penalty. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in

the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered wherever you get your podcasts. OnDrugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. I said, Barry, I think we should drop this case. I think we should drop this case. Or I think we should settle this, settle this, settle this. And he would say no. Shashank Upadi headed up Apotex's legal department. Nice shirt.

Did you wear that on our behalf? Standing outside his front door of his home, which is in a well-to-do suburb of Chicago, Shashank greets us wearing a T-shirt with a red and white Canadian flag emblazoned on the front. Hi, what a beautiful day. We settled into his basement to talk. I said, well, Barry, we're going to be spending X number of dollars on this. And I said, what's the point? He said, no, no, we should never reduce our litigation spend. He says, our litigation spend today on some of these products will become the products that we're able to launch in the future. So here I am trying to save money.

And I kept fighting with Barry. I said, Barry, but this is ridiculous. I said, you know, I'm going to be spending millions of dollars on these and I can't see an outcome in the immediate future. And he says, Shashank, he says, why are you always so concerned about saving my money? Right? He says, it's my money. And I said, I understand that, Barry, but I'm trying to save you money. He says, well, if I don't want you to save my money, then you shouldn't have to worry about saving my money. So continue on. When Shashank first met Barry, they were on opposite sides of the courtroom. I think it was 2004, and was representing Eon Labs. There was an ongoing lawsuit between Apotex and Eon Labs on some patent infringement work. Basically, Barry was arguing that Eon Labs had infringed on Apotex's version of an immunosuppressant drug.

So Barry, as the inventor, was testifying regarding the story of how this invention came about and how he got this U.S. patent on his version of the cyclosporine generic. And that was the key, how Barry got his U.S. patent. I think it was the second or third day Barry actually testified. Barry testified about why he did certain things during the patent application process in Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, which in my mind triggered some unique and very underused provision of the patent law. So without getting into the nitty gritty of patent law, you're welcome, So without getting into the nitty gritty of patent law, you're welcome,

Shashank was able to figure out that Apotex did not actually have a legitimate patent for that specific drug in the U.S. And essentially, by the time the night was over, Apotex's counsel recognized that the patent was in fact invalid. The case was over. This was worth tens and tens of millions of dollars. The case was over. This was worth tens and tens of millions of dollars. He then hired a recruiter to recruit me. I mean, if they can beat you, why not get them to join you? Shashank was the first person who I interviewed who could actually say that they'd beaten Barry at his own game. So it's not really a surprise that he wanted to hire him.

So the recruiter literally asked, what would it take? And I said, well, you'd have to make some type of really obscene offer in order for me to consider it. Like, I mean, it'd have to be obscene and uncivilized. So he came back and they made an offer I couldn't refuse. What was your title there? My title going in was Vice President of Global Intellectual Property.

But effectively, I was the first lawyer and only lawyer into the company. I was building the legal department, hiring lawyers and hiring paralegals, you know, as part of the overall building of a department. Because again, Apotex was a multi-billion dollar company, tens of thousands of employees, and no internal legal staff. Shashank worked at Apotex was a multi-billion dollar company, tens of thousands of employees and no internal legal staff.

Shashank worked at Apotex in an office beside his boss for five happy and busy years. Barry and his outward persona to everybody in the industry and everybody in Canada was some type of obnoxious bully, bull in the china shop, litigious. obnoxious, bully, bull in the china shop, litigious. But that was one side of his personality to the outside world when it came to the business side. Now, internally, this is where the other part of the, maybe he was a Gemini and the other twin would come out in that he was, in my view, a marvelous boss. You know, like he gave lots of opportunities to people. There are people that, at least when I was there at Apotex, that had been there 20 years, 25 years, 30 years. Right. And they had gotten promotions and they had done well in their life, you know, wealthy. Well, not everyone who worked at Apotex came out happier and wealthier.

We had somebody arrested on site, you know, for theft of trade secrets, you know, and stealing formulations and whatnot. But that was back in, oh gosh, I don't know, 2010 maybe, 2011. Apparently the company had been informed about fake Apotex drugs being manufactured and sold in India. So though we had facilities in India, they were just, you know, R&D facilities, development and commercial manufacture. But not for the actual Indian market for Indian patients. According to Shashank, the fake drugs were being made in New Delhi and the counterfeiters were slapping Apotex stickers on the bottles. period of time that the person running the Indian facility, the counterfeit facility in India, was brothers with one of our guys in Toronto. The RCMP came and arrested him. He got arrested in front of dozens and dozens of people, right? And we wanted that to happen. We didn't want to take

him down at his house or anything like that. And he said, no, no, he needs, we need to make a lesson out of him. We want to prosecute to the full extent. The arrest would be humiliating for sure. But Barry and his leadership team would protect his business at any and all costs. Look, I know that this guy was the primary breadwinner in his family. I know that he has a wife and a couple of kids. And more likely than not, his wife and his kids will probably move back to India. They'll probably get divorced.

And I've probably wrecked their lives. He said, I know that. I said, I'm not doing it. He brought this upon himself. Apotex declined to comment for this story, but it's clear after everyone we talked to, after everything that's been said about Barry Sherman, that he was singularly obsessively focused on Apotex and its continued success. And just like

generic drugs themselves, your view of Barry's business style depends on what side of those fights you find yourself on. Barry did not create court systems. He did not create judges. He did not pass legislation on his own and rules and regulations. It was already pre-existent. So he says to himself, if this institution exists, it's there to adjudicate disputes. He didn't have a problem availing himself of the court system or his money. And I know there's people like myself who are very concerned about his money. But when he wasn't, what more can I say? You know? Barry may not have been concerned about his money when it came to litigation. And he certainly didn't shy away from aggressively going after somebody who crossed him. Someone who he thought was in the wrong. But what about those who are in the right?

Olly, we're gonna go upstairs, honey. We're gonna go upstairs, sweetie. Oh, we're still going. Yeah, one more flight, sorry. Dr. Nancy Oliveri knows what it means to be on the opposing side of Barry Sherman. Hold on, I wanna count. Have you ever counted?

One, two... Three, four, five, six. A lot of it has now been scanned. Four, six, four, seven, eight, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54... There are more than 100 boxes of legal papers, court exhibits, decisions, and appeals, box upon box, stacked up on top of each other, tucked away in a corner room on Nancy's third floor. In the next room, there are shelves upon shelves of books. Hooked, The Push to Prescribe, The Whistleblower, you know, Overdosed America, The Truth About the

Drug Company, Deception, Pharmaceutical Promotion in the Third World. My favorite book is here. Best title in the world. The Real Pushers. For many years in Canada, Nancy Oliveri's name was synonymous with Barry Sherman's. Nancy was a respected hematologist at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. She needed a pharmaceutical company to fund one of her drug studies, and Barry Sherman stepped up. What followed for years would go down in history as one of Canada's most shameful medical research scandals. Most of it fought through the courts. Oh, how much the legal...

Well, it's a very difficult answer because I was not only Sherman's target. I sued Sherman as well. Well, I countersued him. Or maybe he countersued me. So, in a sense, you could say, well, you can't be blamed for the fact, I countersued him, or maybe he countersued me. So in a sense, you could say, well, you can't be blamed for the fact that you countersued him. And that's probably true, right? But there was a considerable amount of money spent, all my savings at the time. But, you know, the problem is the breadth of the whole issue. The Nancy Berry saga is really complicated. It's actually the

basis of a number of news investigations and author John Le Carre even consulted with Nancy while researching his best-selling book, The Constant Gardener, which was eventually made into a big Hollywood movie. Here's Nancy's story in a nutshell. In 1993, Nancy connected with Apotex. Like I said, she needed a drug company to help fund a study for a new drug that she was researching. And the timing for Apotex was perfect. The Canadian government had been looking into the generic drug industry, complicating the way Barry ran his business and cutting into Apotex's profits. The Canadian Drug Manufacturers Association wants the prime minister to fire his industry minister, John Manley. The group accuses Manley of ramming through changes to drug patent regulations,

which favour multinational companies such as the American giant Merck Frost. Barry Sherman is the head of the Canadian company Apotex. Mr. Manley has shown that he is a pawn for the cartel of American and European drug manufacturers who seek only to gouge the Canadian consumers and to take the money out of Canada. The chance to make an original drug was also very appealing. If this was a success, Barry would get to swim with the big boys, Big Pharma.

The drug Nancy had been working on treated a blood disorder. Thalassemia is an inherited hemoglobin disorder. Patients need regular transfusions, meaning generally monthly transfusions. And this causes a buildup of iron in the system. Nancy was working on changing the way the drug removed the excess iron. Rather than infusing it under the skin for 8 to 10 hours, she wondered if a drug could be delivered orally. It would be easier on everyone,

but especially kids and people in less developed countries. The partnership with Apotex ran smoothly for a few years, but that all changed around 1996. Nancy began to see data that suggested the drug might not be working as well as they had hoped. We know that the data aren't looking very good and we tell the research ethics board we think that our view of this drug has changed somewhat and we think that you know we're going to have to tell the patients that some of the people in the trial probably should come off the new drug and that other people should know that some of the people have had to come off the new drug and that other people should know that some of the people have had to come off the new drug. Not rocket science. Nancy believed that ethically, she needed to tell

her patients and let them decide if they wanted to keep going with the trial or leave it. We thought it would be pretty simple. We were the scientists on the trial. We had been trusted to design the trials, implement them, supervise them, make sure people were on time for their MRIs, got their ferritins on this Saturday. But what followed was definitely not simple. Nancy went to Apotex and said she wanted to change the consent form. To her surprise, Barry didn't just say no. He said that if she did that, he'd sue her. And that telling the patients would mean breaking

the confidentiality agreement that she'd signed. Undeterred, Nancy published her concerns. And she told her patients. And then Barry sued. And sued and sued again. He also went after her reputation. Sherman had gathered a lot of key opinion leaders by that time to negate and disparage and discredit our stories and me personally. The fallout was significant to say the least. Nancy got hate mail. She said the harassment felt targeted and organized. And this turned out to be true.

It was. The smear campaign was coming from a doctor at Nancy's own hospital. And this doctor had been close with Nancy. In fact, they started the study together. But after receiving a quarter of a million dollar grant from Apotex, his allegiances changed. Barry denied any knowledge of this campaign against Nancy, most infamously during an interview on the news program 60 Minutes. Thinking that the cameras had been turned off to change tape, he told host Leslie Stahl that Nancy was, quote, nuts. Barry calls her nuts with a smile on his face and a bit of a laugh behind his voice. I think that's what you call a shit-eating grin.

But then the tables turn. Leslie Stahl calls him out, reminding him that everything is on the record. And then you start to see the panic settle in his eyes. It's very clear that Barry is not used to being challenged. Barry Sherman's opinion of me does not rattle me one bit. Like, honestly, you're defined by your enemies. It didn't shock me that he thought I was, or said that I was nuts, or said that he thought I was nuts, or whatever. Yeah, it didn't... You know, it's interesting. I guess I had seen it all those years ago,

but in this day and age, the sexism to me, the gendered bullshit of that, the way he treated you, even the fact that he said that you were nuts, he would have never said that about a man. You think so? A hundred percent. Despite the viciousness with which Barry went after Nancy, Nancy says she was not that surprised. Barry is going to act like, Barry, you know that old movie, The Crying Game? Yeah, the frog and the scorpion or whatever it is. It is the frog and the scorpion. The scorpion asks the frog to take him across the river on his back,

promising not to sting and kill the frog on the way. Because if he kills the frog, the scorpion will also die, drowning in the river. So the frog relents, the scorpion crawls on his back, and halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog. As certain death approaches, the frog asks, Why did you sting me? And the scorpion answers, I'm sorry, it's in my nature. I guess I always find Barry such a bad guy, such a limited narrative.

Barry used his money to influence decision makers. Principal players at SickKids Hospital and the University of Toronto did his bidding because Barry had promised them millions of dollars. They can't offend Barry. And if Barry says, you've got to make sure this girl is fired, they fire her. Apotex terminated Nancy's drug trial and then her contract. She says sick kids

fired her, not once, but twice. They say she resigned. Regardless, Nancy fought back, and in 1999, she was reinstated. In the end, Nancy was vindicated, and she was lauded as a whistleblower. But she says she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself and countersuing.

And when you look around her house, it's clear that Barry Sherman is still a big part of her life. Framed magazine covers, newspaper articles about her and her battle with Barry are all over the place. Hanging on bathroom walls, up the stairway, along the upstairs hall. Sick kid battle turns bizarre. The front of the glove and mail. Whistle blower on the front of McLean's. And when you talk to her about those years, there are still flashes of anger and lingering trauma. Sometimes FedEx dropped off something.

My daughter said, what is it? I said, I don't know. I think it might be a lawsuit. She looked at me and said, lawsuit? I said, yeah. It's not a lawsuit. It's not a lawsuit. That is the first thing I always think of.

It's a lawsuit. This is at least 10 years since I settled the last one. No, it's eight. Barry and I settled in 2014 before he regrettably died. And yeah. And once I saw a guy pacing outside and I hid because I thought he was going to serve me. With what? I haven't been in court in eight years,

but it's always there. We're not talking to Nancy Oliveri because we think she had anything to do with Barry and Honey's deaths. Although she did joke about being disappointed that the police never knocked on her door. But her case does shine a light on the way that Barry used his money and his personality to shove his enemies around. He was relentless. Even pharmaceutical executives like Steve Smith at Bayer allegedly let his

feelings for Barry get the better of him. So it makes sense that people believe someone in the pharmaceutical world wanted him dead. Do you have a theory? I mean, some people said brand pharma. And I'm thinking to myself, it's like, on what planet would any brand pharma company, like, what do they get whacking Barry? Barry's former lawyer, Shashank Upadi again. I went through and I looked at the cases and said, I don't see a single case in which Apotex was the sole destroyer of stock market valuation of a particular large brand company.

So I said, that's ridiculous. Shashank doesn't believe that Barry was killed over business. Shashank doesn't believe that Barry was killed over business. Initially, my hope was a random junkie recognized that Barry Sherman is the chairman of a pharmaceutical company and pharmaceutical companies make oxycodone and hope that Barry had good quality drugs at home. But it was like a burglary gone bad. Then some people say it was the family. I don't think anyone else in his right mind would have done for them what I did. I spent about $15 million trying to help the three of them, all down the drain. Trying year after year after year to help them make better lives for themselves. That's next time on the no good, terribly kind, wonderful lives and

tragic deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman. This episode was written and produced by me, Kathleen Goldhart and Michelle Shepard. Lisa Gabriel is our producer. It was executive produced by Charlie Webster, along with Lisa Gabriel and myself. Andrea Varsany is our associate producer. Our technician is Laura Antonelli. Sound design and mixing by Reza Daya. The role of Barry Sherman is played by Saul Rubinick. Stuart Cox is the executive producer for Antica. Special thanks to our London producers,

Jago Lee and Simona Ratta. This is a Lionsgate Sound co-production with CBC Podcasts. Lionsgate Sound engineered by Pilgrim Media Group in collaboration with Antica Productions, exclusively for CBC. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.